


It Is Written

by forthegreatergood



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friends to Lovers, Frottage, Lack of Communication, Love Confessions, M/M, Masturbation, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Pining, Sexual Fantasy, Sexual Roleplay, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 20:48:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 29,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21203867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forthegreatergood/pseuds/forthegreatergood
Summary: Aziraphale finally finds a book that can shock him: a romance novel calledAn Archangel’s Mercywith an uncomfortably familiar pair of models on the cover.  Fifteen years later, he and Crowley finally have a conversation about it.Crowley picked up the novel, and Aziraphale watched his eyebrows climb as its contents registered.  Crowley flipped it over and read the blurb on the back, then let out a low whistle.“If you’d told me this was what you were springing on me, I’d have kept the vodka.” He drained half his wine in one go. “So, who’s getting blasted to kingdom come once Michael gets wind of this?”Aziraphale kept his expression carefully neutral, looking for any sign that Crowley was toying with him.  There was nothing but bemused surprise in the demon’s posture or face.“I’d rather thought it might have been, well…” Aziraphale grimaced and bobbed his head.“What,me?” Crowley laughed, his eyes going wide.





	1. 2005

**Author's Note:**

> All characters property of Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, and the respective production and licensing companies.
> 
> Thanks to [foxyk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxyk/pseuds/foxyk) for betaing!

Aziraphale steepled his fingers and glared at the romance novel on the table as if he could turn it into something else just by being irritated with it. Which, technically, he supposed he _could_, but the issue was more that it existed in the first place than that this particular copy of it was sitting in his shop, rubbing his nose in the fact that it existed. 

Besides, transmuting books into other books was cheating, and if angels cheated, he’d have a bookshop full of folios lost to time and scrolls in languages not spoken since the Flood.

He got to his feet and made for the kitchenette. Cocoa. He would make himself some cocoa and think things through, and there would be a perfectly plausible, innocent explanation for everything.

Once the milk was warming away, he rubbed his eyes. Perspective, that was what he was missing. He’d stumbled on the book and assumed a nefarious and personal intent, like a sinner with a guilty conscience seeing a man on the street crying “Repent!”. Modern romance novels were closer to penny dreadfuls than theological treatises or the works of some fleeting genius. Their audience was voracious and insatiable, and on top of simply telling a story, readers expected novelty. There were trends, both literary and social, that were observed, tracked, and incorporated into the texts. The books followed the dictates of fashion.

Aziraphale whisked together the rest of the ingredients and took comfort in the idea that he was simply overreacting to a naturally occurring phenomenon. 

Some ridiculous American tv show had popularized the idea of angels as romantically or sexually desirable, no doubt. It was the sort of thing that had happened before, over the decades, though to his great relief the media in question was usually wholesome enough that it made that sort of leap difficult. Things were racier these days, or maybe it was that children who’d grown up watching a pretty woman play an angel had slightly more adult ideas about the whole thing now that they were, well, adults. All it took was a critical mass, in any case, and then it inevitably started spilling into the market for bodice-rippers.

And once that happened, it was practically inevitable that demons were going to crop up somewhere, in at least a few things. Humans as a whole seemed to find it far easier to believe in the supernatural as a force of malevolence than of good, after all--it was a bit of an irregularity to find someone who thought angels might be real but dismissed the existence of the Fallen out of hand. And, of course, there were few humans alive who didn’t go wide-eyed and even weepier than usual for a good story about star-crossed love. Pyramus and Thisbe, Aeneas and Dido, Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde--if there was a good reason for two people not to fall in love, humanity seemed to want nothing more than to watch them suffer the consequences of doing so anyway.

And once all of _that_ had happened, it was clearly only a matter of time before some enterprising author dug up the whole thing with Michael and the dragon.

Yes, clearly that was it--he’d known having something to do with his hands while he mulled it over would get him on the right side of it. Aziraphale poured the cocoa into his mug. 

He’d seen the novel, and he’d panicked a bit, and that never helped anything. He’d probably be laughing at himself in a few hours, once he’d calmed down. Humanity never really let anything go--he was sure they’d get around to reviving decorative hermitages and flagpole sitting any day now--and the idea of illicit celestial liaisons had been swirling around since the very beginning. It was only that now the circumstances were right for someone to be writing about an illicit affair between mortal enemies instead of an illicit affair between the ethereal or the infernal and human beings. Aziraphale chuckled to himself and sipped at the chocolate. 

He’d worked himself into such a state over nothing more than the ever-grinding drive of disposable literature and human cupidity. It had finally begun mining a vein that ran too deep for comfort, that was all. It was bound to happen eventually. Aziraphale’s eyes went back to the book, still sitting where he’d left it, only now it was just that: a book. Robbed of its sinister import, it was nothing more than a bit of ridiculous pulp with a lurid cover.

Aziraphale breathed a sigh of relief and took another sip of cocoa. He’d gone a little harder on the sugar than he’d meant, but there wasn’t any harm in it. What was the occasional indulgence to an angel? 

A smile tugged at the edges of his lips. Might as well see what nonsense humanity thought angels got up to with their opposite numbers, while he was at it. He’d bought the thing, after all, and he didn’t really have anything else on for the rest of the afternoon. Reading it was as good as any other petty amusement. And who knew? Perhaps it could provide valuable psychological insight into the human condition.

***

Aziraphale set the novel down and slumped back in his chair. The cocoa had gone cold and congealed on the end table at his elbow, and he felt… not quite nauseated. Queasy. Exposed, as if he’d wandered into the street with no clothes on. Ashamed, in a much sharper way than those nebulous moments when he tried to tell Gabriel about some clever new thing humanity had invented and Gabriel expressed disgust with Aziraphale’s fondness for it. He didn’t know why Gabriel found perfume repulsive; he knew precisely why he himself should find this sort of thing repulsive.

Aziraphale worried at his lower lip and let his fingers dig into the plush upholstery of the chair’s overstuffed arms. It could only be Crowley, couldn’t it? Crowley had noticed, at some point, and found some infernal inspiration in it. Crowley had at least not seen fit to rub Aziraphale’s face in it, though he supposed running off a million copies of the damned thing and then turning it loose without telling him was almost worse. He pinched the bridge of his nose. Would he prefer to be laughed at to his face or behind his back?

But then, maybe it was the outgrowth of some old fit of pique. They’d been rather on the outs in the ‘80s--both of them alternating between sniping at each other about who’d been responsible for what new and terrible crisis and not speaking to one another over the accusations--when romance novels had had something of a renaissance. Crowley might have…

Aziraphale swallowed and retrieved the book. No--the copyright date was from the previous year, 2004 stamped in clear numerals right there on the verso. There were no mentions of previous editions, publishers, or titles. If it was Crowley…

He laughed bitterly to himself. _If_. Who else could it possibly be? There was no question of it being mere human caprice, not with all the fiddly little details about celestial uniforms and infernal rankings that the book had gotten right, and with not a single blessed thing gotten wrong. Michael’s speech patterns were even recognizable in the less hackneyed dialogue the author’d given to ‘Archangel Mika.’ Aziraphale glared at the book’s cover. The demonic flourishes the artist had given her love interest--Prince Legion--were horribly familiar, too, weren’t they? Golden eyes, black scales accenting sallow skin, that sinuous, serpentine form--they’d gone with lush dark braids instead of red curls, but there was such a thing as artistic license.

Aziraphale shook his head. It was pointless to sit here brooding over it or speculating on Crowley’s reasons. He’d never had the sense that the demon was mocking him about his little ill-advised--

He ground the heels of his palms into his eyes. It probably wasn’t quite honest to call something of which he’d been painfully aware for the past three hundred years a _crush_. It had camouflaged itself so well within his growing affection for Crowley that Aziraphale hadn’t noticed it until it was far too late to stamp out, but he’d at least had the comfort of thinking of it as an infatuation until the decades had steadfastly refused to do the work of smothering it for him. He liked Crowley, and he desired Crowley, and he enjoyed Crowley’s company, and he longed for Crowley’s touch, and at some point all those disparate threads had wound around one another too tightly for Aziraphale to tease them apart again.

Small wonder that Crowley, who always noticed more than he let on, had wound up catching him out. Aziraphale supposed that at least he’d been spared all the pointed little comments on it, all those sharp, needling little questions, that Crowley could just as easily have deployed against him. He hadn’t had to stammer out a response when the knowledge was new and painfully gained, hadn’t had to watch Crowley’s smirk turn knowing and dismissive, hadn’t had to fight down a chastened blush when Crowley asked if it wasn’t a bit on the nose, _falling_ for a demon.

But then to turn around and do something like this--to draw it all out over hundreds of pages, for an audience of millions? Aziraphale didn’t bother willing his corporation not to flush red at the thought. Or at the premise itself, for that matter. Mika saw Legion and surprised herself at finding him handsome instead of dreadful; Aziraphale could only grimace at how badly Crowley had put him on the back foot by not being a grotesque. 

But then Mika had remembered her duty, where Aziraphale had never been sure of his. Her fight with Legion had been sincere, and she’d won it. Aziraphale had never seen much of a point to trying to chase Crowley off, even when they were technically on the same assignment and working at cross-purposes. The one time it might have been appropriate to fight him, Crowley had stalked off muttering about the stubbornness of angels instead of drawing his blade, and Aziraphale had considered himself well rid of the demon and his horrific proposal. Of course, Mika forcing Legion to yield and then showing him mercy was what sparked the torrid romance, while Aziraphale had…

Aziraphale ran his fingers through his hair. He’d vaguely tolerated Crowley’s presence when it would have been inconvenient to expel him, and he’d been rewarded with the demon’s occasional company. It had itched at him, the loneliness of his Earthly existence, and he’d never found succor for it in Heaven. They’d wanted to know why he was making an early report, why he was requesting a partner, why he lingered instead of returning to his post immediately. 

Crowley might quarrel about any and everything, but he never seemed in any great hurry to send Aziraphale away again, and he never asked any uncomfortable questions about why Aziraphale was putting up with him. The few times Aziraphale had found him genuinely sulky and out of sorts, it had been easy enough to impose on him until his mood improved and he was more companionable. Crowley had been there, and that had been enough, and then gradually it had become more than that. Aziraphale had come to see him as a constant, to rely on him. Aziraphale had come to need him.

But Crowley had still come and gone on his own schedule, and it had taken formal negotiation and a fairly intricate set of rules to call him outside of that. It was practically a summoning ritual, sometimes, the things it took to make the demon appear in a place and time of Aziraphale’s choosing. The specific things he had to say, the reasons that Crowley might find compelling, the pantomime grovelling Aziraphale had to indulge in whenever he wanted something in addition to their normal quid pro quo. What if all it would really have taken him was grabbing Crowley by the scruff of the neck and giving him a good shaking?

It was laughable on the face of it. There were lines, and while Crowley had never articulated them, Aziraphale could tell when he was about to cross one. Crowley would bare his teeth and stiffen in his clothes and crook his fingers into claws and let the hiss creep back into his voice, and Aziraphale could either back down and mollify him or…

It had never occurred to him to try charging ahead and seeing what happened. Part of it had been the fear that he wouldn’t see Crowley again for ages if he tried it, and part of it had been the fear that Crowley would show him some aspect of being a demon that wasn’t fit for polite company. 

There was nothing Aziraphale could do to surprise Crowley, not really. He’d been an angel, once--he knew the score. Any tricks Aziraphale had up his sleeve, Crowley’d had at his own disposal, once upon a time. 

Aziraphale hadn’t met too many demons after the Fall, but he’d seen enough of them to know that Crowley was going out of his way to give an innocuous presentation. He was fair, for a demon; he didn’t flaunt his corrupted aura or neglect his corporation. It would be uncharted territory, if Aziraphale pushed his luck. Crowley might become something he couldn’t unsee, couldn’t forget the feel of. Crowley might punish him for wanting in a way the demon couldn’t tolerate by taking that pleasant little fantasy and smashing it into a million pieces.

Aziraphale flipped the book over, hiding the image of a beautiful monster brought to heel with nothing more than a few threats and cold steel. Crowley didn’t think him so simple, surely? It was childish, imagining that the barest excuse for a struggle would let Aziraphale declare himself victor and claim the spoils, imagining that Crowley would behave himself and fight fair. Crowley would snarl at the very suggestion of it, if Aziraphale said as much. Of course, Crowley would snarl at the suggestion that he’d enjoy it if he let Aziraphale kiss him or stroke his hair or catch the serpent to his breast, so it was hardly a revelation in that regard.

Then again, what if Crowley wasn’t mocking him with this? What if it was, instead, a sort of map?

Aziraphale blinked at the thought. It was scandalous, preposterous, and yet.

Hell was understanding of cowardice, and its language was one of compulsion, of conquest. Had Crowley been waiting for him to venture past one of those lines for centuries now? Aziraphale thought of Tam Lin, waiting so long for a lover bold enough to face down dark magic. _Hold me fast, and fear me not._

The book’s Mika hadn’t needed to do more than scratch her Legion to obtain that surrender, hadn’t needed more than the promise of mercy to compel his obedience. Crowley couldn’t just let him, wasn’t free to permit a liberty like that, but it was another matter entirely to be defeated and fall into enemy hands.

It was byzantine, even by Crowley’s standards. Aziraphale shook his head and miracled his cocoa warm again. But if not Crowley, then who? 

From what he’d personally seen of other demons, Aziraphale wasn’t sure they’d understand the basic concept of pleasure-reading even with an hour-long lecture and accompanying slides. From what he’d been able to gather from the occasional memo he got copied on, most other demons were only marginally aware of the existence of something called ‘literature.’ That Asmodeus might have come around to an interest in pornography was conceivable enough, but pushing that thought out to encompass not only romance novels but specifically romance novels involving angel-demon trysts seemed absurd.

So then, it was Crowley. Crowley, who hadn’t taken any particular steps to put to book in his hands. Crowley, who’d never even furtively acknowledged Aziraphale’s affections. Crowley, who sneered at and wormed his way out of any demonstration of gentleness or concern with a strutting bravado that only ever made Aziraphale want to pet him and soothe him all the more. Crowley, about whose intentions nothing could ever be assumed. Crowley, whose schemes blew up in his face as often as they didn’t. 

Aziraphale sighed. A rickety and dangerous scaffold on which to rest such a risky venture, and that was assuming there wasn’t some deeper mystery yet unsolved. 

He finished the cocoa and shoved the book into the recesses of a shelf he didn’t bother with often. If Crowley _did_ want something from him, then maybe it was his turn to pout and simper and ask for it with a tremor in his voice and a quiver in his lip.


	2. 2007

Aziraphale rested his elbows on the desk and glared at the stack of missives from Heaven. He should be organizing them, shouldn’t he? If he wanted to find something, that was the way to do it, irritating and time-consuming as it was during the thick of a search. He’d never bothered organizing them, back in the old days. He’d barely kept them, left them scattered about in his wake like shed feathers, in the days before the Black Death had rolled across the world like a poisonous fog. Of course, there’d been fewer, back then. They’d multiplied and gotten harder to keep track of since humanity had really got the hang of transportation and communication. 

Aziraphale had come around to the idea of needing some sort of record of what Heaven expected him to be accomplishing; putting in the actual effort of filing and indexing the things had been something of a different matter. And now Uriel had said something the last time he’d reported to head office that hadn’t sounded quite right, and he’d told himself it was simply a matter of checking what they’d said against what was in the right letter, and that, of course, meant finding the right letter. 

What he needed now would be easier by far if he’d ever taken a moment’s time back then to put his correspondence in order.

He ran his fingers through his hair and sat back. He knew he had the dratted thing--that was the real sticking point. He knew he had it, and not being able to lay hands on it was maddening. If he couldn’t find it, he’d be stuck asking Crowley if _he_’d heard anything, and that wouldn’t do.

Aziraphale gave up on his attempt to glare it into evidence and rooted around in the third pile, the one closest to the wall. He was fairly sure everything he’d gotten in the past century was still on the desk, and the other two hadn’t had what he was looking for, so it stood to reason that it had to be in the third pile. Maybe he was simply imagining things. Maybe Uriel’s statement hadn’t been out of keeping with Gabriel’s orders from a few decades back. Maybe Aziraphale really had been on Earth too long.

He grimaced and flushed hot when his fingers touched something that definitely wasn’t stiff parchment folded into a square and sealed with gold. He’d wondered where that damned paperback had gotten to.

Aziraphale pulled the novel free of the missives and glowered at it. It was at least a better, more fitting target for his irritation than heavenly orders which were, after all, only guilty of being precisely where he’d put them. 

Sandalphon had dropped by unexpectedly, and Aziraphale had scrambled to bury the book in whatever was ready to hand and just about discorporated from embarrassment anyway. Maybe he’d knocked the communique he needed off the desk then? No--it had been months ago. He’d have noticed, surely. Crowley was always making hay over Aziraphale’s terrible housekeeping, but it wasn’t _that_ bad. He knew when things were out of place, anyway, and he lived alone, so it didn’t matter if anyone else knew where anything was.

Not that Crowley would notice if Aziraphale miracled the whole place clean as a whistle and well-organized as a library. He hadn’t so much as dropped by to slide a note through the letter slot in months, not since Aziraphale had taken him to task over his running commentary on the state of the bookshop. How Crowley had thought it was any of his business how Aziraphale arranged his own shop...

Aziraphale shook himself. The fickle beast had stalked off in a fit of pique and refused to answer Aziraphale’s phone calls for days, and it had been all Aziraphale could do to get him back to the park to apologize for whatever it was he’d even said. Crowley had accepted the apology, grudgingly, and he’d let Aziraphale take him for coffee. But he hadn’t been back to the bookshop, and he hadn’t called any meetings on his own since then.

Maybe that was Aziraphale’s problem--nothing to do with Uriel at all, but simple loneliness. He missed Crowley, and he was looking for excuses to hang about Heaven just for someone to talk to. Unlike Crowley, the archangels couldn’t ignore him entirely; protocol dictated that they at least imply that he was an idiot and dismiss his concerns to his face. Cold comfort most of the time, but then, what wasn’t these days?

Aziraphale picked the book up and turned it over in his hands. He needn’t have bothered hiding it, really. Not now, with the spine worn past legibility and the cover chipped past worry. He’d been overcautious, that was all. Overcautious and guilty, and wishing things could go back to how they’d been. 

Crowley’d been almost docile before the spat, letting Aziraphale fuss over his clothes and miracle his hair tidy whenever it got too mussed and drag him to the occasional gallery opening. It had been pleasant, being in his company, and he’d seemed to enjoy the attention. Why Crowley insisted on being so difficult was beyond Aziraphale--were their lives so easy that they had to go looking for things to ruin? Did they have so much to look forward to that they could give things up for no reason?

Aziraphale scowled and hurled the novel into a drawer, then closed it. Tea. He’d make himself some tea, and then he’d go for a walk--by himself--and he’d calm down. It was a beautiful night; the weather was lovely and the sky was clear. The general mood in the neighborhood was somehow cheerful in spite of everything, and London itself was almost happy. He should be enjoying things, encouraging them to continue, keeping his hand on the rudder so that the trajectory was ever upward. He should be in a beatific mood.

Aziraphale squared his shoulders. He’d just been overthinking things again. He’d let everything get to him. 

He’d go for a walk, and calm down, and find the letter, and then go ask Uriel for an explanation. They’d either give him one or try to fob him off directly on Gabriel, and it would probably be thoroughly unpleasant, but at least Aziraphale would have tried. And if he had misunderstood things, then clearing it up now would spare him a significantly bigger problem down the road, wouldn’t it?

Aziraphale put the kettle on to boil and glanced back at the main room. It wasn’t messy, whatever Crowley said. It had character. There was a method to it, an internal organization that made sense to him, and that was all that mattered. Crowley was quite firm about not reading--“No, angel, not even poetry. Do I look like the sort to sit around mooning over love songs?”, and it had been so hard not to tell him that he looked exactly like the sort to sit around mooning over love songs--and Aziraphale wasn’t going to sell anything if he could possibly help it, so who exactly was inconvenienced if Aziraphale’s shelving system was somewhat idiosyncratic?

The water boiled, and Aziraphale’s lips pursed. He hadn’t meant to nudge it along like that, but fine. Whatever got his tea made more quickly without crossing the line into just miracling the tea into being. He smoothed down his cardigan and finished up with everything. A few minutes to steep, and then he’d settle into the most comfortable chair--the one Crowley was always poaching the moment it looked like they might be in the shop for more than a minute--and drink it, and things would be fine.

Aziraphale sighed. Or maybe he’d give the walk a miss and just go upstairs, change into his pajamas, and read in bed for a bit. Maybe instead of bothering the archangels, he’d find one of those computer cafes Crowley’d been so proud of inventing and email him copies of love poems. Aziraphale smiled at the thought, then stopped cold. What on Earth was he thinking?

He snatched his cup from the table and bustled up the stairs, grumbling to himself. It wasn’t fair that Crowley’s absences could affect him like this, not when he couldn’t even reliably tell what would provoke or extend one. Maybe he could email Crowley and simply say, “Come back.”

Would he, if Aziraphale did? No, probably not. Aziraphale set his tea down and changed into his pajamas. They were comfortable and cozy and tartan, and Crowley would laugh himself sick if he ever saw Aziraphale in them. He’d made the mistake of answering the door in his nightgown once, decades back and before he’d given up on mending the thing, and Crowley had stopped and stared at him as if he hadn’t lived through the exact same fashions that Aziraphale had, as if Aziraphale’s clothes were fascinating and strange.

“Just reminded me of that robe you had, back in the day,” Crowley had said, when Aziraphale had asked if perhaps he’d like to take a picture, that it would last longer. Aziraphale had regretted it the moment he’d said it--Crowley was as likely as not to actually have one of those instamatic abominations in the bentley, and he wouldn’t blink at fetching it just to make Aziraphale sorry he’d taken that tone with him. But Crowley’d just gone red at the cheeks and glared at him, had mumbled the explanation and gotten on with things.

Aziraphale sat down on the bed and put his head in his hands. What would he even have done, if Crowley had given him that look back when he’d still been kitted out in his brilliant robes and his gold belt and his utter confidence in Heaven’s plan?

Crowley hadn’t been bothering to cover his eyes back then, had he? No, that hadn’t started until the Romans had come up with it, and Aziraphale could begrudge them that invention until the seals were broken. Those amber eyes had been so expressive when they’d first met. Crowley hadn’t even been bothering to make them look vaguely human, back then. They’d been all glossy gold and sharp and perceptive in a way Aziraphale had hated and craved at once. 

Aziraphale closed his eyes. Crowley would have looked at him like he was unique, like he was real--like he was _beautiful_\--and made him thrill at the danger of being marked out by a demon, that sharp face bare and those lovely eyes wide and wanting. Crowley’s hair had been so long, back then. He’d worn it loose, curls spilling over his shoulders and blowing in the wind and just right to wrap a fist around for a handhold. Crowley’s robes hadn’t been as fine, no, but they hadn’t been much worse, either--soft and clean and well-cut, princely compared to the filthy rags the other demons had preferred even then--and it would have been the work of a moment to hike them up, run his hands over Crowley’s legs, satisfy the lust that would have glowed in Crowley’s eyes at his touch.

If they’d been careful of the choreography, they could have even done it right out in the open, in the middle of a field of wheat or wildflowers, with no one the wiser. They’d been expected to fight, if they’d met. No one would have remarked on an angel wrestling with a demon, except to hope the right one won.

He could have thrown an arm around Crowley’s chest, pressed him to the grass still damp with the morning’s dew, pulled up the hem of his robe, and had him calling Aziraphale’s name as he came, and they’d have been left to it. What would Crowley have smelled like, then? Incense and fresh-fallen rain, probably. Damp feathers and nectar, sun-warmed stone and a cold, wet wind.

Aziraphale groaned and lay back, hand slipping under the waistband of his pants. How had he forgotten the smell of Crowley’s wings? And the way that black robe had clung to his frame when the wind had kicked up, the way they’d both been rain-spattered in spite of Aziraphale’s best efforts. The way the wind and the rain had conspired to lay bare the entire topography of Crowley’s body by the time the two of them had parted. How simple it would have been to herd Crowley closer against Aziraphale’s side just by curling his own wing…

He took his aching cock in hand and stroked it. He’d have been defenseless, if Crowley had given him that look when they’d first met. He’d have curled his hands in Crowley’s hair and shoved him against that tree and kissed his throat until Crowley was laughing with it, until those clever fingers were tugging impatiently at Aziraphale’s belt and those lips were red and plump and those striking eyes were glittering with desire. He’d have had Crowley right there in the garden, legs wound around Aziraphale’s hips and wings spread to brush the branches, bark catching at his loosened robe, no worse judgment for either of them than what they’d already earned.

Aziraphale imagined Crowley’s bare thighs flexing against his hands, imagined his member sinking into Crowley’s flesh, imagined Crowley’s nails digging into his shoulders, Crowley’s voice sighing “_More_.” into the shell of his ear.

His hips jerked up off the mattress, and he came with a muffled cry. Aziraphale looked around the room, blinking at the familiar surroundings. His need receded slightly, blunted for the moment, and Aziraphale groaned and cleaned himself up. It was all so much foolishness--there were times Crowley barely tolerated his presence now, never mind back then. Crowley would have shied away if he’d tried so much as laying a hand on him, back then. Crowley would have spread those wondrous black wings and fled across the desert if Aziraphale had reached for him, back then.

Aziraphale cradled his teacup in his hands and drank slowly, trying to compose himself. It was just unwanted isolation, that was all. Everything was fine; he was just fretting. He’d read that novel one too many times, and he’d upset Crowley, and he missed the sense of camaraderie that had existed in Heaven before the War, and he just had to be patient and let it all pass.


	3. Post-Apocalypse

Aziraphale drummed his fingers on the counter and tried to reassure himself that everything would be fine. The world hadn’t ended; he’d suffered through everything he’d ever feared, and it had all still turned out just fine in the end. 

Crowley had made a habit of stopping by the bookshop at least a few times a week, and the way he prowled around and kept watch on the door and the windows, Aziraphale assumed it had more to do with trying to keep him safe than an overwhelming desire for his company, but still, he would take it. He didn’t have to worry about what Heaven might say--this would be a drop in the bucket, all things considered. 

Crowley’s apparent dedication to continuing their partnership was enough of an assurance in and of itself. They hadn’t spent so much time together since they’d played at working for the Dowlings, and that had been both Crowley’s idea and technically work-related. Hell and all its demons had barely been able to keep Crowley from weaseling out of things he didn’t want to do--a vague sense of obligation and simple habit wouldn’t be enough to bring Crowley to his door this often if Crowley didn’t _want_ to be there.

It was just, Aziraphale thought, a conversation. Just a tiny, exploratory conversation.

He dragged his fingers over the paperback’s worn spine, restoring the book to an almost pristine condition. It would be counterproductive, he was sure, to let Crowley see exactly how many times he’d read it in the years since he’d stumbled over it in a Waterstone’s remainder bin. Cheap romance novels weren’t meant to stand up to the borderline-obsessive repeated poring-over he’d subjected the thing to; they showed their use too clearly. 

He’d gone back and forth over the years, trying to remember if Michael had behaved much differently, before the War. It was possible, surely, that she and Asmodeus had spent enough time together that he could have pulled it off? It needn’t be Crowley’s work. Crowley had certainly never brought it up, never hinted at its existence. It wasn’t like him to be so patient, if he’d done something for an audience; he wanted a reaction, and he’d settle for demanding one if it didn’t come in a timely fashion.

But Aziraphale’s subtle requests for more information on Asmodeus’s activities hadn’t yielded much to support a claim that he’d moved into anything softer than blue films, and really, Aziraphale couldn’t see any demon but Crowley having the sort of cleverness and imagination to produce something like the book.

Aziraphale shook his head. Maybe Crowley had done it under orders and had really rather hoped Aziraphale would never find out about it. Maybe it really was nothing but a monstrous coincidence. Maybe God had finally found a prophet even more unorthodox than the poor fellow who wouldn’t stop writing about lions and lampposts. Maybe a thousand and one things that Aziraphale hadn’t thought of. The only way to know was to _ask_, which was precisely what he was going to do, and it would be fine because everything else had been fine so far.

It wasn’t like he was going to ask Crowley anything else. It would be simple, clean, and straightforward. There was no reason to bring up anything about the book but its origins. The question of whether or not Crowley wanted anything from him beyond friendship was something he intended to approach carefully and considerately and once the demon had finally calmed down a bit. The question of what that might look like if he did was…

Aziraphale exhaled slowly and very deliberately kept himself from tugging at his waistcoat. It was turning into something of a nervous tic lately, and he’d had to mend it twice in the last week alone.

If Crowley was potentially, possibly interested in something more, then--well, it was going to be a process, wasn’t it? A process that definitely didn’t involve asking if Crowley might want an avenging angel to be too smitten to actually smite him, to claim him for Heaven in a more mutually agreeable way, to delight in yielding before at least one of the Host, or any other foolish thing it had crossed Aziraphale’s mind to hope for in the past fourteen years. It had been one thing when it was an idle fantasy that let Aziraphale at least pretend to still be loyal, to pretend that his instincts still lay in the right direction. 

Now that Aziraphale had broken with Heaven, there was really no excuse to still be indulging the odd daydream about winning Crowley over with an embarrassing, risible combination of strength in arms and wide-eyed, breathy flattery. No excuse at all to think of pulling Crowley to the floor, pinning him down, telling him that he was too beautiful to be one of the Fallen, surely there was some mistake, that it would be a sin to mar such loveliness. _Submit, and I promise that I will treat you gently._

It was laughable to think that Crowley would take the opportunity to go limp under him in surrender, to bare his throat to Aziraphale’s lips, to say yes. They didn’t need play-acting and masks anymore; they could simply speak their minds.

The bell above the door rang, and Crowley stalked into the shop, his head on a swivel. Aziraphale waited until after the demon had finished the visual sweep of the bookshop that had become habitual since their exile, as if perhaps Aziraphale would miss an assassin lurking in the corner or an angel loitering at the stairs and it was up to Crowley to keep tabs on things. As if, should such a thing slip past an angel created as guardian, it would wait for Crowley’s entrance to strike, affording him a convenient opportunity to foil the attempt.

It was difficult not to smile fondly at Crowley’s inspection, for all that it was pointless. His knight in shining armor, ever vigilant.

“What’s so important, then?” Crowley demanded, once he was satisfied that things were fine. He circled to his usual armchair and collapsed into it. Aziraphale watched him, bemused. It was always a sort of controlled demolition with Crowley, whether he’d just come straight from a nap or been working nonstop for months.

“Sorry, did I interrupt a bout of intense skulking? Derail a bit of light fomenting?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley grunted and pulled a small bottle of vodka out of his coat pocket. He tossed it to Aziraphale with a sneer.

“If you _must_ know, it was advanced fomenting. I was fomenting up a storm.” Crowley hooked one leg over the edge of the chair and twisted himself around into a proper slouch. “Parliament’s never gonna know what hit it, but I’ll let you in on a little secret--it was me.”

Aziraphale shook his head and adjusted his glasses. 

“Will you stop fiddling with those blessed things? Not like you even need ‘em,” Crowley grunted.

“Neither do you,” Aziraphale pointed out tartly. Crowley’s lips pursed, and his face twitched to the side, eyes clearly not meeting Aziraphale’s. After a moment, Crowley took the sunglasses off and tossed them onto a side table. “Thank you.” 

Crowley made a face and crossed his arms, fingers burrowing under his elbows. It was the sort of uncomfortable face Crowley made when Aziraphale said thank you and meant it, though, not the slightly pained face he made when Aziraphale told him to do something and wasn’t suitably gentle about how he put it. Another thing they needed to have a discussion about, Aziraphale thought. He held up the bottle.

“Birthday cake vodka?”

“You’ll love it.” Crowley smirked. “My idea, as it so happens.”

Aziraphale looked askance at the label, with its three separate reminders about the drinking age and procuring liquor for minors. He sighed. “Got a commendation for it, did you?”

“Well.” The smirk faltered, and Crowley looked away. “I mean, yes, but that’s not why…” He pushed himself up so he was closer to something resembling sitting. “You remember the first time we were in the Balkans, and I got you to try vodka, and you looked like I was having a go at poisoning you?”

It had tasted like rubbing alcohol, and Aziraphale hadn’t let Crowley talk him into another round.

“Anyway, they’ve got every flavor under the sun now. Orange, strawberry, licorice, mango.” He jerked his chin at the bottle. “Try it.”

Aziraphale poured half a shot into a tumbler and sniffed at it. “It smells like rubbing alcohol and sugar.”

Crowley groaned and glared at him, and Aziraphale lifted the glass to his lips and tried a sip.

“It tastes like someone dissolved a slice of birthday cake in rubbing alcohol. Well done.”

“You’re impossible,” Crowley said, slumping back down.

“If I wanted to get drunk on cake, I’d just have a slice of cake and, I don’t know, bourbon. Mulled wine.”

“Ugh.” Crowley’s lips pulled back over his teeth. “Where’s the fun in that?”

He snapped his fingers, and the bottle in Aziraphale’s hands vanished. 

Aziraphale frowned. “If you like it, there’s no call to--”

“No, I only brought it for you.” Crowley unhooked his leg from the chair’s arm, set both feet on the floor, and twisted himself upright. “Though I wouldn’t mind splitting a riesling, if you’ve still got any of that batch you picked up in... I want to say Alsace? ‘bout ten years ago, I think?”

“Mmm.” Aziraphale rubbed his chin. “No, that’s been gone for a bit now. I didn’t get much--I liked it, but it was so similar to a dozen others that I could pick up right down the street that it didn’t seem worth the bother of carting it back. Shame, though, really. If I’d known you liked it so well, I could have--”

Crowley waved a hand dismissively. “It was the company more than the vintage.”

“Oh.” Aziraphale brightened and tried not to let the delicate pink of the blush he could feel rising through his corporation show on his cheeks. It was probably the nicest thing Crowley had said to him in the weeks since they’d picked themselves up and gotten on with things after the Ritz. “You know, I’ve got a chardonnay you might like, if that’s what you’re in the mood for.”

“Sure,” Crowley said, bracing his elbows on his knees and leaning forward. “Unlike some people, I’m game for just about anything right now.”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes and waved a hand, and the bottle, now in an ice bucket, thunked onto the coffee table in front of Crowley. Two glasses joined it with another wave of his hand, and Crowley snorted.

“Show off.” Crowley snapped his fingers, and the cork vanished. He poured them both a glass, then closed his eyes and tested the bouquet, inhaling deeply with his lips slightly parted. Aziraphale studied that focused, attentive look Crowley always got when he was weighing some new cologne or vintage. 

“Go on, if you want…” Aziraphale began. Crowley’s eyes flew open, and the demon gave him a flat look. “I don’t mind, Crowley. It’s a part of you.”

“Oh, come off it. It was one time, and first off, I was hammered. Secondly, I was trying to figure out who else was sneaking around to see if they were a threat to both of us who needed to be dealt with,” Crowley snapped, focusing determinedly on anything but Aziraphale’s face. “It was an emergency situation. I do not _need_\--”

“I’m not saying you do,” Aziraphale said quickly, holding up his hands. He settled onto the loveseat across the coffee table from Crowley. “I’m saying if you _want_, that I certainly don’t _mind_. I’ve always found it a bit endearing, honestly.”

He’d always found Crowley’s slender, forked serpent’s tongue rather adorable, actually, but saying _that_ when Crowley was already in a mood would just as likely see him stalking back out the door and that would be it for the evening, short of a long and humiliating bout of wheedling followed by an equally humiliating burst of relief and pride that he’d managed it if the demon let himself be moved.

“Endearing,” Crowley repeated softly, staring at him.

“Well, pick another word if you don’t like that one,” Aziraphale said, his lips pursing. “You don’t let many people see it. When you relax enough around me to just be… yourself, that extra little bit, it means something. I appreciate it.”

Crowley grunted, his cheeks coloring, and then glanced back down at the wine in his hands. He flicked his tongue out, almost too fast to see, then tilted his head and thought for a long moment. “Buttery. Bit of lemon. Italian?”

Aziraphale nodded.

Crowley raised his glass and sipped it, and Aziraphale smiled. “Does it meet with your approval, then, or shall we try something else?”

“It’s good, angel. Don’t bother yourself.” The corner of Crowley’s mouth twitched up. “So, what was so important that I had to shelve every last bit of fomenting and get down here on the double?”

“You know, I did specifically mention in the text that we could reschedule if it was inconvenient,” Aziraphale said. He retrieved his glass and held it to his nose. The only thing he could smell was that blasted vodka, and the first sip he took tasted strange and astringent. He grimaced and miracled his palate clear.

“I mean, you did, but also somebody could be trying to discorporate you and your cry for help would be postscripted with ‘if it’s not too terribly inconvenient, wouldn’t want to trouble anyone.’” Crowley spread his hands. “So.”

“I would not,” Aziraphale protested. As if his phrasing and tone being on the more delicate side of things wasn’t the direct result of millennia of Crowley alternating between morose reticence and overeager attendance with no discernible pattern. It had always been like threading a needle, with Crowley’s moods. 

Too casual, and Crowley might take his sweet time about putting in an appearance, aloof as an irritated cat at what he chose to understand as Aziraphale’s ambivalence. Too importuning, and Crowley would appear scant moments later, wide-eyed haste giving way to glittering anger at nothing really having been wrong. 

Aziraphale glanced at Crowley, eyes tracing the chiseled lines of his face, the spare lines of his body. As if Aziraphale would have deliberately dragged Crowley into real danger. He’d spent centuries piled on centuries trying to get the reckless creature to show even the barest hint of restraint, some scant bit of self-preservation. The last thing he’d ever do was ask Crowley to risk himself in Aziraphale’s defense.

It had been bad enough, letting Crowley borrow his corporation and then walk off with it, not knowing what might happen but knowing every single little thing that might go wrong--_what if they hurt him, what if they kill him, what if they come for him like a thief in the night and I never see him again, what if…_

Aziraphale cut off that line of thought with a shudder. He’d had a pretty damned good idea by that night what Heaven might dispense in terms of punishment. He’d spent so long living in fear of what might happen if Crowley ran up against another angel, or if the archangels decided it was time to sweep all of Hell’s pieces off the board, and there Aziraphale had been, about to hand Crowley over on a silver platter in his own stead. It had been hard not to grab Crowley by the shoulders--his shoulders--and shake him when Aziraphale had said “They’ll be looking for an excuse to hurt you. Do _not_ give them one.” and Crowley had scoffed and assured him that he’d get his corporation back safe and sound.

_“I’ll even get it detailed for you, if you like.”_ Crowley had somehow managed the sultry smirk which only made an appearance when he really wanted to aggravate Aziraphale, and with Aziraphale’s own face at that. It had been enough to make Aziraphale want to scream with frustration, but then it was inarguably better to leave Crowley to Heaven’s dubious mercies than let him get anywhere near Hell, and so Aziraphale had swallowed it and let Crowley declare victory.

“_So_,” Crowley repeated, and cleared his throat. Aziraphale pushed the memory away and tried to focus on the present.

“So, there’s a very decided and simple reason I said it would be fine to reschedule, if you needed. It wasn’t urgent,” Aziraphale said firmly. He tossed the book onto the table between them and sat back. “Any ideas?”

Crowley tilted his head and furrowed his brows. “Finally find a genre you don’t mind parting with? I suppose they do a pretty brisk trade, though these days it’s mostly ebooks. Fewer people giving you weird looks on the tube over ‘em, less tedious to lug around, but then you can’t trade them in for another bag when you’re done. Fiddly way to make a few quid, if you ask me--if you need some scratch I can always transfer a bit of stock your way, get the dividends coming in and so on. Or do you mean it as just an easy way to get Gabriel’s knickers in a twist?”

He leaned forward and picked up the novel, and Aziraphale watched Crowley’s eyebrows climb as its contents registered. Crowley flipped it over and read the blurb on the back, then let out a low whistle.

“This is…” Crowley shook his head. “Where the Hell did you… I mean, just _how_...”

He tossed it back on the table and sat back, running his fingers through his hair.

“If you’d told me this was what you were springing on me, I’d have kept the vodka,” Crowley managed, after a moment. He drained half his wine in one go and stared at Aziraphale. “So, who’s getting blasted to kingdom come once Michael gets wind of this?”

Aziraphale kept his expression carefully neutral, looking for any sign that Crowley was toying with him. There was nothing but bemused surprise in the demon’s posture or face.

“I’d rather thought it might have been, well…” Aziraphale grimaced and bobbed his head.

“What, me?” Crowley laughed, his eyes going wide. He went too still for a moment, then swallowed. “_Me?_ Why in Satan’s name would you--I would never--me? I mean, the thought’s just...” He looked at the book and puffed out his cheeks. “Hang on a minute, then.”

And then just like that, Aziraphale was looking at an empty bottle sitting in a bucket of melted ice, an empty glass, and Crowley stretched comfortably over the arms of the chair, on the last page of the book.

“What?” he asked faintly. His own wine was still cool in his glass, and the light streaming in from the windows was still the same, and Aziraphale didn’t need the clock to tell him that the disruption had been very localized indeed.

“Well, I guess I can see why you thought it might be me,” Crowley said, shaking his head wryly. “Whoever dictated this mess was definitely telling tales out of school. Hate to be them when the hammer comes down, that’s for sure.” 

He wrinkled his nose, and Aziraphale stared at him, heart squeezed uncomfortably in his chest. Crowley had paused time, and Crowley had left him sitting outside of it, and Aziraphale’s stomach clenched at the thought. 

It was because it had left him so vulnerable, he told himself. Crowley might have done anything. Except Crowley hadn’t made any attempt to conceal it, and was in fact rattling on about the fruits of having done it even as Aziraphale tried to square himself with Crowley having so casually and easily excluded him from it.

“Though I do have to state--” Crowley held up his hand, index finger raised. “--for the record, angel--that I am most definitely not running around inspiring humans to write novels about my superiors getting lovingly subjugated by smug archangels.”

“What?” Aziraphale asked, more firmly this time.

“Legion?” Crowley paused and squinted at him, posture going over-careful and solicitous. “You did, ah, read it, didn’t you? I mean, I can’t recommend it, if you haven’t yet, but it felt like the binding had a bit of a give to it. Of course, if you got it secondhand…”

“Yes, I read it. A few times, if you must know.” Aziraphale tried not to flush at that, and then Crowley’s eyes widened and his mouth went a little slack, and Aziraphale couldn’t help but flush. “I had to be sure. I mean, I wanted to be sure, before I asked.”

“All right, all right. Whatever shines your halo, angel, I’m not judging,” Crowley said. He blinked slowly, expression flattening out for a moment. “I mean. You know what I mean.” 

Crowley’s cheeks went pink as he scrambled for his glass. Aziraphale tried not to gape at him, bewildered, and Crowley frowned when he discovered that the wine remained steadfastly gone. 

“Bless it to Heaven and back,” he muttered quietly, the venom in his tone all out of proportion to the inconvenience. 

He snapped his fingers, and the ice was restored to its frosted, functional glory, with another bottle of chardonnay chilling in the bucket.

“Anyway, _Legion_. Not a particularly imaginative transmog…” Crowley paused, mouthing the rest of the word. “No, sorry. Transfigur--transubstan--fuck it. It’s meant to be Ligur, yeah?”

“I really wouldn’t know,” Aziraphale pointed out. 

He took the bottle of wine from Crowley when he started wrestling with it, and it was perhaps not the most selfless thing he’d ever done when he refilled the demon’s glass for him. There was a looseness to Crowley’s posture, a softness to his face, that Aziraphale only saw these days when Crowley’d had a bit more to drink than was, strictly speaking, good for him. And he tended to ramble more, telling Aziraphale things without weighing them first, as if things weren’t so damnably complicated between them.

“I mean, I don’t _know_ either,” Crowley said, raising his glass. “And thank Satan for that small mercy. But according to the rumor mill, the two of them had a bit of a thing going on. I always figured it predated the Fall and demons need something to gossip about--you know, when I couldn’t avoid thinking about it entirely--but it sounds like whoever wrote this had something of an inside line.”

“If it’s just the name--”

“Pfft. Lookit the cover, angel.” Crowley tossed the book back onto the table, and it slid to a stop right in front of Aziraphale. “Poor Mika beats up and then falls in love with a big fucking lizard with golden eyes, who else’s it gonna be? Could even be he was a brunet before he was a lizard, I dunno. I don’t think I met him before he was a Duke.”

“Poor Mika?” Aziraphale asked. He drained his own glass. Archangel Mika had been given something of a happy ending. If Crowley was right and Legion was based on Duke Ligur, there was no way he and Michael could have had anything of significance without their respective spheres catching on in short order.

“Well, bad luck for her, wasn’t it? Just going about her angelic duty, making the world safe for God’s chosen creatures, and then _pow_.” Crowley’s face contorted into a rictus. “Saddled with a demon for the rest of eternity.”

“I don’t recall her feeling particularly, ah, resentful of it,” Aziraphale said. She’d gotten what she wanted, after all, and without much sacrificed that hadn’t already needed to go--her tentative relationship with the book version of Saraqael hadn’t been doing either of them any good. 

Aziraphale wondered if that, too, had mirrored reality, and he reached for the bottle to refill his glass. It didn’t much bear thinking about, what Michael and Saraqael might or might not have gotten up to in their spare time. Aziraphale could see why Crowley had avoided prying any more deeply into the rumors about Michael and Ligur. It had the air of making sport of someone else’s pain, of prodding old wounds just to see if the hurt still lingered there.

“Well, no, of course not,” Crowley said impatiently. “It’s a romance novel--a few deep kisses and a good shag, and all’s forgiven no matter how much of a cock-up the whole thing’s made of someone’s life. No one’s out here selling _Tess of the d’Urbervilles_ to the Poundland set. They’ve got it hard enough already, they don’t want somebody mucking up their escapism with a cold dose of reality.”

“Still.” Aziraphale swirled his wine, letting it warm a few degrees against the skin of his palm. What was it Crowley had said, that night when they’d decided to give saving the world a go? He gave Crowley a small smile. “Surely it’s not so bad, once you get used to it.”

Crowley stared at him, and for a moment he looked so stricken that Aziraphale wanted to dive across the table and take Crowley’s face in his hands, smooth it away, make it better. He straighted up and set his glass down, and then the look was gone, banished as quickly as it had manifested, and Crowley was making a face.

“Seriously, angel, it’s…” He grunted and slid forward, reclaiming the book. “Hang on, let me find the passage again.”

He raised his hand absently, ready to snap his fingers, and Aziraphale leaned forward and seized it in his own without thinking. Crowley blinked at him, eyes going to the hands wrapped around his fist, the book forgotten next to the wine.

“Will you please stop that?” Aziraphale asked quietly. Crowley’s skin was cool against his palms, and Crowley wasn’t snatching his hand back, and it would be so very easy to wrap one hand around Crowley’s wrist and the other around his scarf and pull him across the table and kiss him, wouldn’t it?

“Wh…” Crowley opened and closed his mouth a few more times before his eyes focused properly, and he looked at Aziraphale’s face. He extracted his hand from Aziraphale’s and shoved himself back in his chair, shoulders tight and eyes darting. “You didn’t ask me over to watch me read for two hours, angel.”

“Not as such, no, but I also didn’t ask you over to tuck yourself away in a bubble for two hours,” Aziraphale said firmly. He let his hands fall to his knees and cocked his head. “You don’t really think your company is as objectionable as all that, do you?”

“Took the end of the world being announced just to let me stay the night on the couch,” Crowley snorted, almost to himself. His eyes narrowed. “Oh. You’re just worried I’m going to swan around touching all the books you won’t let me near, aren’t you? That I’m going to leave little soot-smudge fingerprints all over your Marlowe folios and rip the revelations out of all your Sayers novels?”

“You wouldn’t!” Aziraphale’s eyes went wide at the thought. Then he shook his head. Of course Crowley wouldn’t. Or rather, if he was going to, he’d have done it a century or so ago. He shot Crowley a disappointed look. “Don’t be unkind. I wouldn’t have asked you here if I didn’t want you here. Which means, yes, that I want you _here_, not skipping around in time until you’re ready to talk to me again.”

Crowley looked down and then sucked at his teeth. “Gotten used to me, have you?”

Aziraphale bit his lip. _I need you. I couldn’t bear it without you._ How fast would Crowley be back out the door if he said it? Aziraphale retrieved his wine glass and gave Crowley a shy smile. 

“You could say that, I suppose.” He paused for a half-second. “You could even say that I’ve grown accustomed to your face.”

“Ugh.” Crowley slouched down in the chair and glared at him. “Just for that, I’m very definitely ripping the ends out of all your Shaw the next time you’re not looking.”

“If you can find a copy of _Pygmalion_ lurking around in here, you’re welcome to rip out as many pages as you like,” Aziraphale told him. He liked Shaw--he did--but there’d been something blood-curdlingly dreadful about that play. Crowley’d loved it, naturally, and Aziraphale had never quite gotten up the nerve to ask if it had had a bit of infernal inspiration. Crowley shifted, that slithery twitch he did when it seemed like his skin had gotten too tight for a moment or two, and Aziraphale wanted to pull him into his lap and hold him fast until he was calm again. “So, you’ve really no idea about the book?”

Crowley shrugged uncomfortably and sighed. “Doesn’t seem like anything my lot would get up to, honestly. Your lot either, I suppose, though you’d know that one better than I would. Maybe the latest Agnes Nutter’s gone commercial?”

“Oh, dear.” Aziraphale sipped his wine. That was a thought, wasn’t it? No need for inspiration divine or infernal--purely human was capable of doing the trick on occasion. They’d had ample demonstration of that over the past month.

“Michael and Ligur.” Crowley grimaced, and he rubbed his eyes. “You know, if the two of them really are going at it every chance they get, it’d make a bit of sense, her being the one to show up with the holy water.”

“How’s that?” Aziraphale asked. He remembered how often he’d tripped over himself trying to tell Gabriel about Crowley--not too much but not too little, not lies but not the whole truth, the amusement or fond exasperation always threatening to creep into his voice or onto his face. 

He’d had the benefit of being exiled in all but name, even then; he’d only had to discuss Crowley once or twice a century, and it was in passing at that. In the grand scheme of things, their assignments really hadn’t overlapped that much. But Michael hadn’t been prone to wandering, and her rank meant unexplained absences were noted. Surely Gabriel wouldn’t have looked the other way if she had a too-cozy relationship with Hell? Volunteering to head Downstairs would have been pushing it, if nothing else.

Crowley gave him a guilty look. “Ligur’s the one who got shuffed off into six hours of oblivion courtesy of the thermos you gave me.”

“I--” Aziraphale swallowed. “Hrm.”

He thought about what it might look like, if it had been Crowley killed in the line of duty. It didn’t square with Michael’s predictable gloating and very self-interested fear. She’d been angry, and she’d taken a very unangelic pleasure in helping Hell rid itself of a turbulent demon. He’d frightened her with his failure to die, but there hadn’t been the sort of personal desire to see him pay for what he’d done, which Aziraphale couldn’t imagine _not_ feeling if someone had hurt Crowley. 

Then again, if Crowley’d been wiped out of existence one moment and back in his arms the next, Aziraphale couldn’t imagine anything short of God Herself prying him from the demon’s side again.

“I don’t think she loves him, then,” he said, trying a second time. “Whatever else is going on. She didn’t seem… distraught.”

“He’s not the sort of demon you get distraught about, angel,” Crowley grunted. He swirled his wine in the glass and frowned. “I mean, I’m not entirely sorry to have that off my conscience, but I can hardly say I wasn’t doing the world a favor. He’s...” Crowley’s nose wrinkled, and his eyes went distant. “Huh.”

“What?”

Crowley spread his arms and exhaled noisily. “Dunno. Nothing. I was just going to say that he’s got ideas about being a demon, and then I realized you could say about the exact same things about Michael and being an angel. They’re right there on the same page.”

“Politics makes strange bedfellows,” Aziraphale offered. 

It went a long way, being on the same page about things. Crowley’s reflexive pity for the humans cast out for such a small offense had been the first thing to make Aziraphale less certain that he’d made a horrible mistake in giving them his sword. He hadn’t been able to talk himself out of it, once he’d had the idea, but then Crowley had come along and argued in their defense, and suddenly it had all seemed less overwhelming. Crowley’s faith in him--Crowley pointing out that it might not even be possible for an angel to do the wrong thing--had softened the blow. 

It had been more of a kindness than Aziraphale had realized at the time. He’d been so focused on his immediate discomfort that he hadn’t spared a thought for how much worse he’d have felt without the demon tucked under his wing, assuring him that the newly independent humans seemed clever and brave, and it had all probably been meant to happen, and no one could blame him for what a demon had done, anyway.

“I must’ve missed the part where they actually made it to a bed,” Crowley scoffed, eyeing the book. “Hey, now--maybe it was that American with the bike. Kid like that’s gotta do something for kicks besides memorize her great-great-great-great-grandmum’s prophecies, right? Romance novels are a bit more forgiving than most--you just have to follow the formula. Like detective novels, but you don’t have to bump anybody off if you don’t want.”

He opened it, thoughtlessly wrapping the cover all the way around the spine and half over the back as he looked for the copyright registry, and Aziraphale sucked in a sharp breath.

“Oh, please, we both know you’re not keeping it,” Crowley scolded, his spine straightening. “It’s--” He waved a hand. “--_evidence,_ is what it is. Not part of the collection. You can’t go all pie-eyed over every book you see in the wild, I know you can’t. You’d never get anything else done, for one thing, and...”

Crowley trailed off and frowned. He flipped to the back, then turned the book over in his hands, and then, finally, held it up and flicked his tongue out. A sudden tendril of dread unfurled in Aziraphale’s chest, as soft and light and unmistakable as the footstep of an intruder on the stairs.

“When did you say you’d found this, angel?” Crowley asked, squinting at the book like it might answer instead.

“I, ah.” Aziraphale blushed. _Going on fifteen years ago now, why do you ask?_ He knew why Crowley was asking--he could feel it in his bones, in the way his heart was beating faster and his skin was tightening. “Well.”

“Because the Device woman would’ve been, what, ten when this was written?” he continued, frowning. “It’s a first edition, and it smells like it’s been here since before the last time you changed your cologne.”

“I’ve had it for a while,” Aziraphale confessed.

“And you’re just asking me about it now because… ?” Crowley’s brows were furrowed, and his look was opaque. A just punishment for not taking the bottle away from him earlier, Aziraphale thought--there was no guessing at whichever track Crowley’s quicksilver mind might be running on once he was in his cups.

“I wondered at the time, but I didn’t really want to know the answer. Now that it doesn’t matter quite so much, I thought it might be nice to, well, clear it up.” Not too much but not too little, not a lie but not the whole truth. This wasn’t the time to have any of the more complicated conversations about what they were to each other, not with melodramatic softcore pornography informing every assumption Crowley might make, not with so many cringe-inducing fantasies all but put on display with it. All he needed was for Crowley not to tug on the thread of it, just this once.

“You didn’t really want to know?” Crowley asked incredulously. He let himself fall back into the chair’s embrace and stared at Aziraphale, a look of disbelief on his face. “Really? You spent the last however many years thinking I was running around putting stuff like _this_ out there for general consumption, and you weren’t champing at the bit to tell me off about it?” He tilted his head, eyes questioning. “I know you weren’t just holding it in reserve for the right moment, or you’d have trotted it out and given it a good dusting off after Warlock turned out to be a bust.”

Aziraphale could feel the color draining from his cheeks, and he made himself breathe. It was one thing, holding his tongue while Gabriel dredged up every single way in which he fell short of the ideal. It was one thing, managing Crowley’s moods and sulks and weathering the occasional rant. This was something else, and he hadn’t quite known he could feel this way and not be sick from it.

“Didn’t really want to know,” Crowley scoffed softly, draining his glass. “If you didn’t want to tell me, you could just say, angel.”

He glanced up, the beginnings of an easy grin curling his lips, and then it slipped when he caught Aziraphale’s expression. He frowned and sat up, mouth working in that way he had when he was trying to get his tongue around twenty different questions and managing none of them with any success. After a moment, he made a frustrated noise and got up, and Aziraphale looked down at his hands, his eyes focusing on the glass in them. 

Crowley would leave, as he did. Crowley would leave, and at least Aziraphale wouldn’t have to see the look on Crowley’s face when he finally realized why Aziraphale had kept the book and why he hadn’t said anything until now. It would be easier, not having to see the moment Crowley’s expression went from good-natured bafflement to hissing, coiling anger or cold, reproachful disgust. 

_It’s a red-letter day when I do you a favor without you having to beg me for it, and you thought a bit of swordplay would have me rolling over for you? Do I look like such an easy conquest as that? Or is it that I’m supposed to find you so daunting that I’d get down on my knees for you, no questions asked? I rebelled against God Herself, but a soft little principality who’s lost his sword to a postman is going to bring me to bay--is that it?_

Six thousand years, and Crowley had never so much as tried to kiss him, and he desperately didn’t want to see revulsion on Crowley’s features when Crowley looked at him now.

And then Crowley was perching on the loveseat next to him, and taking the glass from his hands, and Crowley was wrapping an arm around Aziraphale’s shoulders and pulling him against his chest.

“Shh, it’s all right,” Crowley sighed, patting him on the back. “Whatever it is, it can’t be as bad as all that. You really can just say, if you don’t want to tell me. I mean, we’re… It isn’t… I’m not your keeper, angel, you don’t answer to me.”

Aziraphale exhaled slowly, his sides shaking with the effort it took to keep himself in hand, and he let his fingers curl around Crowley’s lapels.

“Just, if it’s dangerous, we should probably deal with it together, yeah?” Crowley continued gently, his arms tightening around Aziraphale’s shoulders. “Seventeenth-century prognosticating witch said so and everything.”

“It isn’t dangerous,” Aziraphale mumbled. He closed his eyes and let himself lean against Crowley’s bony frame. It had been ages since Crowley had let him so close, since Crowley had been so gentle.

“Well, that’s something then, isn’t it?” Crowley’s hand stroked down his spine so settle at the small of Aziraphale’s back. “Forget I asked, okay? I was teasing, that was all--I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Aziraphale swallowed hard. Crowley might not turn away from him after all, might smile and be flattered and…

And who was he trying to fool? He and Crowley had circled each other for ages; Aziraphale knew the steps to this dance by heart. Vaulting straight for a potentially non-existent finish line was the surest way to send Crowley running for the hills, just like Crowley coming right out and saying “What if we just _didn’t_?” had sent Aziraphale into a panicky fit of denial. Just like Crowley saying “We can go off together.” had sent Aziraphale into another panicky fit of denial.

Aziraphale let himself relax against Crowley’s chest, and Crowley stroked his back again.

“That’s it, angel,” he murmured, “it’s all right. You’re all right.”

Crowley had been trying to save him, not proposing that they elope. Crowley cared for him, insofar as a demon could--might love him, if Aziraphale was lucky and God had been kind enough to leave Crowley that much. None of which translated into Crowley being prepared to hear the words leave Aziraphale’s mouth, or Crowley being prepared to have Aziraphale ask him to say them himself, or Crowley being interested in anything more than perhaps the odd therapeutic embrace or two on a loveseat because Aziraphale had gone all pale and clammy over nothing.

“You know, if you did start selling copies, it probably would throw Gabriel into an absolute froth,” Crowley said, after a long moment.

“Leave it, dear,” Aziraphale told him. “Please.”

“Sorry.” He moved to pull away, and Aziraphale tightened his grip on Crowley’s jacket, and Crowley stopped and went back to holding him.

Aziraphale wondered if they’d both had enough to drink that they could write all this off tomorrow, pretend it hadn’t happened until they were ready to talk about why it had. Probably not. He didn’t feel the least bit drunk, and Crowley might be tripping over ‘transubstantiate’ and a bit looser in the joints than usual, but his arms were tight around Aziraphale’s shoulders and his hands were sure on Aziraphale’s back and his voice was confident in Aziraphale’s ear.

Crowley’s hand wrapped loosely around the back of his neck, gentle and cool against his too-warm skin, and Aziraphale’s heart skipped a beat. He froze, uncertain of how to respond but perilously certain that if he chose wrong it would be an uncorrectable mistake, and Crowley made a small noise and let his hand fall.

“Sorry, angel.” And he sounded it, sounded ashamed of himself. “I should’ve asked--”

Aziraphale grabbed his wrist and moved his hand back to where it had been, pressed it there, and covered Crowley’s hand with his own.

“You don’t have to, Crowley,” he said, quietly enough that Crowley hopefully wouldn’t pick up on the tremor in his voice. He hadn’t thought about it, just done it, half panicked and half heartbroken that Crowley had assumed he’d done something wrong in offering comfort. “I know you meant well by it.”

Crowley inhaled slowly and carefully, clearly steadying himself, and his fingers curled around the back of Aziraphale’s neck more firmly. Aziraphale let go and wrapped his arm around Crowley’s waist instead, holding onto him.

They’d been together so long, and all they had left was one another, and Aziraphale only wanted not to ruin it by wanting more, and was it so much to ask, after everything? Was it so wrong to want more? They’d begrudged each other everything, at one point in time or another over the last six thousand years, but things were _different_ now. 

Every price they’d ever been afraid of paying had been collected, and then some, and there was no one left to demand more. The only thing left was to reap the rewards. He wanted to make Crowley happy, and to be happy with Crowley, and dozens of other iterations on the theme. It was so little, and at the same time so much.

“So long as you know, angel,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale relaxed in his arms.

If only, he thought, they could stay like this forever.


	4. Chapter 4

Aziraphale looked up from the psalter in his hands. He glanced around, looking for whatever it was that had demanded his attention. He didn’t hear anything. He listened harder, and still he heard nothing, which was odd in and of itself, wasn’t it? Aziraphale belted his tunic and reached for his boots. Whatever had caused the sudden stillness would need looking into, and it wasn’t as if the dubious shelter of his little pavilion was doing him any good anyway--it couldn’t keep out the damp, never mind danger.

The sharp tip of a knife pressed into his back, and Aziraphale froze. “Crowley.”

“Nothing personal, angel,” the demon said, his tone infuriatingly detached. “Orders are orders, you know. And since we’re apparently following them to a T, well. I promise I’ll make it quick, if it’s any consolation?”

Aziraphale grimaced. He’d gotten careless and complacent, and he’d let his guard down too far, even though he’d known Crowley was lurking about. He probably had this coming, didn’t he? 

“You know, it really isn’t any consolation, actually,” he snapped.

“All right--quick and also painless. Happy now?” Crowley asked.

Aziraphale closed his eyes and prayed for an even temper. Blast the demon for punishing him like this. He had the right to refuse an offer, didn’t he?

“Fine, be that way,” Crowley sighed, and Aziraphale heard the crunch of grass as he shifted his weight. The dagger’s point pulled back a hair’s breadth, resting against his skin but no longer dimpling it. “See you in a century or two, angel.”

Aziraphale darted to the side and unfurled his wings, and Crowley blessed furiously and ducked out of the way, uncharacteristically slow and not quite dodging in time. The blade of Aziraphale’s right wing caught him across the forearm, and the perfectly ordinary, normal knife flew out of Crowley’s hand. Crowley dove after it, and Aziraphale dove after Crowley. He caught the demon in the midriff with his shoulder, bowling him over and flicking the dagger out of reach with the tip of one wing. Crowley hit the ground with a groan, the air rushing out of his lungs as Aziraphale landed on top of him.

Crowley’s lips pulled back in a snarl, and Aziraphale scrambled to avoid a clumsy, flailing blow aimed in the general vicinity of his head. He’d have expected the graceful, deliberate strike of a snake--he could parry that easily, he knew his business in a straightforward fight. Crowley was thrashing about randomly, like he didn’t even mean…

Aziraphale cursed himself for a fool and managed to get his hands around Crowley’s wrists. He shoved the demon flat against the grass, spread his wings, and shouted, “_Enough!_”

Crowley tested Aziraphale’s grip on his wrists, and Aziraphale let more of his weight rest on them. Crowley grimaced and stopped struggling, his eyes staring up at Aziraphale, his chest heaving as he tried to get back the wind Aziraphale had knocked out of him with that first blow. The color was high on his cheeks, and his eyes were molten, and God help him but all Aziraphale wanted to do was press his lips to that rosy mouth and claim the demon as his own.

Crowley’s gaze went to the dagger, glinting at the edge of the fire’s light, and then back to Aziraphale’s face. He swallowed. “Just make it quick, will you? I’d have done the same for you, you know I would’ve.”

“You had orders to discorporate me?” Aziraphale asked, trying to wrap his mind around it. Hell meant to... what, mildly set them back? Even if Gabriel left Aziraphale shuffling through the queue for another corporation, it hardly meant the Earth would be unguarded; Uriel would have another agent on the ground within a day. It was pointless provocation. Aziraphale supposed that was what Hell did, if they couldn’t manage more, but it didn’t make any _sense_, even without Crowley putting as little effort as possible into actually pulling it off. “You had orders to discorporate me, and you just--”

Crowley writhed under him, muscles cording under pale skin where his tunic had rucked up, and Aziraphale held firm. Golden eyes flashed under dark, beetled brows, and Aziraphale shifted so he could pin both Crowley’s wrists with one hand. Crowley hissed and shivered under him when Aziraphale grabbed his chin and made the demon meet his eyes.

“You really expect me to believe you?” he asked.

Crowley growled at him, and a dark, scalloped shadow rippled under his skin, the first hint of scales instead of flesh. 

“Stop that.” Aziraphale let his face go hard and his halo flicker into view. Crowley squinted against the light and hissed at him but subsided, and Aziraphale extinguished the glow again as soon as the dark stain of incipient scales vanished. “_Why?_”

“How the heaven should I know?” Crowley grunted, blinking at him in the sudden comparative darkness. “You think I’m consulted on policy decisions any more than you are? Arthur’s too successful for their liking, you’re the reason, follow the bouncing ball.”

“Why discorporation? Why not--” Aziraphale stopped. Something had flickered in Crowley’s eyes, there and gone again too fast to read, but he _knew_. “Why not send you with a real weapon? Or hellfire?”

Crowley bared his teeth and glared balefully, and Aziraphale grabbed a fist full of Crowley’s hair, fingers tightening. “Answer me, demon.”

“They just said get rid of you, _angel_,” Crowley spat. “If they wanted hellfire, they should have said hellfire.”

“They meant for you to murder me,” Aziraphale said softly. Crowley squirmed under him and wouldn’t meet his eyes, and Aziraphale let go of his hair and cupped his face.

“They didn’t specify,” Crowley ground out, his expression going sullen and persecuted at Aziraphale’s touch. “Will you stop gloating already and just get this over with?”

“You can’t think I’m in any more of a hurry to hurt you than you were to hurt me,” Aziraphale told him gently. He brushed his thumb over Crowley’s cheek, and Crowley flinched.

“What are you on about? I just tried blessed fucking hard to stab you in the back.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s true,” Aziraphale conceded. Crowley had tried about as hard to stab him as Crowley had tried to hit him. “You almost managed it, too.” He tipped Crowley’s chin up so the demon was looking at him instead of the knife. “Such a vicious thing you came here to do, and you dare beg for mercy now that you’ve failed?”

Aziraphale waved his hand, and the knife appeared in it. Crowley went perfectly still under him, eyes focused on the blade as it dipped toward him. Aziraphale caught the neckline of Crowley’s tunic with the tip of it and pulled down toward Crowley’s navel, the cloth parting easily on the blade’s edge. It was sharp as a razor; it would have been as painless as Crowley could make it, if Aziraphale had been discorporated. Not an entirely selfless thing, if Crowley had been playing at what Aziraphale suspected--there would be punishment for failure, he was sure, but being discorporated in the attempt would have been ample proof that Crowley had tried.

Crowley trembled beneath him as the knife cleared the final inch of cloth, and Aziraphale stuck the dagger into the earth beside them. He brushed the remains of the tunic aside, baring Crowley’s chest, Crowley’s belly, the sharp jut of Crowley’s hips.

“How dare you look so fair and attempt a deed so foul?” Aziraphale breathed, letting his fingers trace the faint dusting of red hair from Crowley’s navel to his leggings. 

Crowley hissed softly, then groaned and canted his hips when Aziraphale’s hand stopped moving. “_Please._”

Aziraphale wrapped his hand around the back of Crowley’s neck and squeezed, and Crowley’s eyes fluttered shut, his lips parting deliciously, and what Aziraphale wouldn’t give to never have to let him go again.

Aziraphale bent his head to Crowley’s ear. “Tell me--what form would you have my mercy take, if I deign to show it to you?”

Crowley turned to press his cheek to Aziraphale’s, an answer hanging on the tip of that sinuous tongue--

Aziraphale woke resentfully, dragged back to consciousness by a persistent knocking at the front door. 

He turned over on the sofa and shaded his eyes against the bright morning sun blasting in through the shop’s windows. It was very much not time to open yet. It was very much not time to open yet, and he could all but feel the cool softness of Crowley’s skin under his fingers, the angular stretch of Crowley’s body between his knees, and whoever it was at the front door wouldn’t stop pounding on it, and God was testing him, surely.

Aziraphale got to his feet and miracled his corporation into something close to a presentable state. He intended to put the fear of properly posted hours signage into whoever was banging on the door, and it generally helped to not look as if one had just been dragged from a sound sleep and out of bed at the worst possible moment. He straightened his clothes self-consciously.

Aziraphale hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but eventually the sun had gone down, and eventually Crowley had gently extracted himself from whatever _that_ had been, and then Crowley had gone back to his own place once he’d been satisfied that Aziraphale would be fine. After all that, Aziraphale simply hadn’t wanted to think anymore, which sleep definitely had as a recommendation. 

Aziraphale hadn’t wanted to think anymore, and he’d stretched out on the sofa and walked himself through the motions of going to sleep, and then once he’d fallen asleep, everything he wanted and couldn’t have had helpfully picked right back up where his conscious mind had left off.

He groaned quietly to himself and combed his fingers through his hair. He hadn’t been entirely aware that dreaming was possible for angels, but then maybe he hadn’t put himself under far enough. He’d ask Crowley about it, the next time he saw the demon; Crowley treated sleeping like a vacation, whenever he could get away with it. If anyone had figured out what it took for an angel or a demon to dream, it would be Crowley.

Aziraphale flung the door open, drew himself up to his full height, and glowered like a looming thunderhead at the human being standing on the other side of it. A deliveryman had his hand raised mid-knock, and Aziraphale’s lips pursed, his ire suddenly wrong-footed and foundering. He recognized this deliveryman. He’d given his sword to this deliveryman.

“Begging your pardon, Mr.--ah--Fell.” Lesley cleared his throat and produced a parcel and a clipboard. “I’ll be needing a signature, please?”

“The shop is closed,” Aziraphale said coolly, eyeing the package. Far, far too small to be his sword back again.

“Yes, sir. Instructions were clear on that point. Said I was to ‘raise a bit of hell’ on the stoop until you opened up, sir. Suggesting blaspheming, but professional conduct code’s very clear on the use of bad language while on duty.”

“Ah.” Aziraphale relaxed. That would be Crowley, then. “Why didn’t he just deliver the damned thing himself?”

“Couldn’t say, sir, but…” Lesley jiggled the parcel and the clipboard hopefully in Aziraphale’s direction, and Aziraphale clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and took them.

He scrawled his signature in looping, graceful script on the sheet and gave the board back to the deliveryman, who tipped his hat and walked back to his van as if it was a matter of no consequence. Then again, Aziraphale supposed, if the man had made a delivery to Death himself, a fussy bookseller who was more than he seemed was probably just a day ending in Y.

Aziraphale closed the door and threw the bolt, then drew down the shade for good measure. He almost called Crowley, but then there was no sense in that until he knew what it was he’d be reproaching him for. He deposited the parcel on the counter and pulled a letter opener from the drawer. It was the work of a moment to open the wrapping and slide out the contents.

Aziraphale stared at the book in his hand, his brain refusing to believe the… what had Crowley called it, when he’d been mauling Aziraphale’s copy of _An Archangel’s Mercy_? Evidence?

Well, that certainly fit the bill, didn’t it? Aziraphale rubbed his eyes. Maybe he was still dreaming, but no--he couldn’t be so lucky, could he? He was very definitely looking at a time-yellowed but otherwise pristine copy of _An Archangel’s Indiscretion_, and the models on the cover bore a deeply uncomfortable similarity to Gabriel and Beelzebub. He tossed the wrapping into the trash and went back to the sofa, and he decided he wasn’t getting back off it until he was ready to come to grips with the fact that he was probably going to have to read the blasted thing.

The phone rang after five minutes, which disrupted his plans vis-a-vis not getting off the couch but also let him stop thinking about the latest book to join his collection.

“Got the package, then?” Crowley asked brightly. The memory of the hissed, soft _please_ from Aziraphale’s dream raised gooseflesh on his arms, and Aziraphale told himself to focus on what was actually happening instead of juvenile fantasies.

“Which you just happened to have lying around?” Aziraphale demanded.

“Pssh. You know damn well I found it online and just had it shipped to you straightaway instead of bothering with it myself.” Crowley hissed to himself, on the other end of the line. “Looks like it was meant to be a series, but it folded after just the two. Little blurb about it cited an imprint re-org, but the author doesn’t seem to actually exist and the publisher… You still there, angel?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said quietly. Of course Crowley wouldn’t have been able to resist picking at the thread, trying to unravel whatever it was that had upset Aziraphale so much.

“Good. You know, I thought those two bastards looked awful chummy, back at the airfield. The gall, trying to kill us over fraternizing when they’re--”

Aziraphale winced at the weight of that word--fraternizing; by God, the fight they’d had over that one--and cut him off. “They were trying to kill us for derailing Amageddon, not for fraternizing.”

Though yes, they’d very likely have tried to kill one or both of them over their friendship, if that had come to light earlier. Aziraphale rubbed the back of his neck and remembered Crowley’s hand on him.

“Whatever, angel.” Crowley sighed. “They’re pricks, is my point. Two-faced, hypocritical pricks who never had the right to raise their voices at you, never mind anything else, and--” He cut himself off with a frustrated grunt. “And you’re welcome, for the book.”

Aziraphale grimaced at the novel, with its cover suggesting something he’d really prefer not to imagine at all never mind suspect was a reality, and tried to sound sincere. “I appreciate the thought, Crowley.”

“I was wondering…” Crowley began, and there was a hesitation in his tone that made Aziraphale’s spine stiffen and heart quicken. “Well, that is…”

“What is it?” he asked quickly. If Crowley had guessed, then Aziraphale wouldn’t have to say. If Crowley had guessed, then Aziraphale wouldn’t have a say.

“Well, I mean, would it be all right if… I dropped by later?”

Aziraphale frowned and did a quick mental inventory of why Crowley might think he was busy. There was nothing, and his frown deepened. “Why wouldn’t it be all right? I mean, surely it can wait if you’re busy with something else, but I don’t have anything on until, ah, I think it was the last Friday of the month?”

Crowley didn’t say anything for far too long a time, and Aziraphale waited nervously.

“Crowley?” he said finally. “Why wouldn’t it be--”

“I mean, it’s just…” Crowley broke off with a hiss, and he sucked in a breath, and Aziraphale could practically hear him pacing. 

At least he wasn’t driving, which was a small comfort. The demon was a perfect menace behind the wheel even when he wasn’t distracted, and if he managed to discorporate himself now, they’d both be in trouble. 

Aziraphale wondered if he should just catch a cab to Crowley’s place and have this conversation in person, but then if Crowley was asking if it was all right to drop by the bookshop, maybe it meant that Aziraphale was meant to ask if it was all right to drop by Crowley’s flat. Which would be a step back, rather, except that Aziraphale had never made a habit of dropping by Crowley’s flat. 

He traced the implications of that small fact, sitting there in front of him like an indictment, and his lips twisted. Crowley came to him, he didn’t go to Crowley--and it hadn’t been Crowley who’d drawn that line. Yet another thing he’d have to rethink, now that they didn’t have the threat of utter destruction constantly hanging over their heads.

“It’s just what you said yesterday, about how you wouldn’t have asked me over if you didn’t want me around.”

“Oh.” Aziraphale’s brows knit. Surely Crowley didn’t mean for him to ask every single time? Aziraphale would, if that was what he wanted, and confound the demon for having him wrapped so tightly around his little finger that--

“And it occurred to me that you haven’t really made a habit of it, and that perhaps I ought to have asked before I just, ah, invited myself over.” Crowley’s voice grew softer as he went on, until it was barely audible. “As it were.” He cleared his throat. “I mean, of course, you seemed perfectly fine with it, and I always…” He stopped and sighed. “But it’s not the same as asking. So, this is me, asking.”

Aziraphale sat down heavily, and he leaned his elbow on the table and rubbed his eyes. “Crowley.”

“And of course, if it’s not, if you’d rather I didn’t--”

“_Crowley_,” Aziraphale said firmly, and Crowley let himself be interrupted for once. Aziraphale sighed. “You don’t need to ask. I’m always glad to see you. If it’s a bad time, I’ll say, but it’s not exactly like we need to keep anything under wraps anymore, do we?”

“Oh.” Crowley was trying not to let his relief color his voice, and Aziraphale rubbed his eyes harder. It wasn’t tears pricking at them, only that he’d been woken up at an odd time and he was still tired--that was all. This hadn’t been what Aziraphale had meant, and trust Crowley to take it and run in precisely the wrong direction, and why did everything still have to be so hard? “All right, then.”

“So when should I expect you?” Aziraphale asked gently.

“Ah. Today’s one of your early closing days, isn’t it? I’ll be by then.”

“You could come by earlier, if you like.” Aziraphale hadn’t meant to say it. He hadn’t. The last thing he needed after a dream like that was Crowley sprawled out on a loveseat, beautiful and smiling at him and waiting for Aziraphale to reach out and claim him. The last thing he needed, and the first thing he wanted, and damn his libido for that.

“I could bring you lunch?” Crowley offered, his tone turning diffident and hopeful, as if he was afraid this was a test that he could fail.

“That sounds lovely.” It would give Aziraphale a few hours to pull himself together before Crowley showed up, and if he hadn’t managed it, then at least he’d be too busy eating to make a fool of himself.

“See you then, then.” Crowley hung up.

Aziraphale gingerly set the phone back in its cradle, and then he went back to the sofa and toppled over into the comfortable embrace of its familiar cushions. His corporation still ached with the unsatisfied desire of his dream, and he wished to God he hadn’t brought up the romance novel at all. He should have started with asking Crowley if there might be other dimensions to their relationship that they could explore, now that they were free. The novel could have waited until after, or been set aside never to be spoken of at all. He’d boxed himself in, now. There was no way to suggest more without tipping his hand in an unseemly fashion, without inviting Crowley to speculate at length about everything Aziraphale would prefer he left alone.

Aziraphale closed his eyes and groaned. It had been a mistake, and he was paying for it now. Would Crowley even say, if he suspected? Or would he just go a bit cool, a bit distant, a bit cautious? A thin thread of shame caught, tangled into a knot, and lodged in his belly. Crowley would think the worst of him, if he suspected. Crowley was too used to pessimism, too used to being hurt, too used to his colleagues looking for any excuse to grind him into the dirt. Aziraphale would have no way to soothe him again, no way to prove it wasn’t all just some ploy to get the demon’s guard down. Aziraphale shuddered.

It wasn’t that Aziraphale wanted anything shameful--he didn’t. He knew he didn’t. It wasn’t that he wanted to hurt Crowley, or to make him do anything he didn’t want, or to seize dominion over him. That had been the barb on the hook of that awful little novel’s proposal: that Legion wanted a joyous, gentle union just as much as Mika did but had no way to understand or express that desire until Mika had shown him, that it had been a relief for him to give up control to a loving partner, that it would have been impossible for him to express either the desire or the relief until Mika had shown him how.

Aziraphale wanted Crowley, yes. He wanted him panting and needy in Aziraphale’s arms. But most of all he wanted Crowley going pliant and still beneath him, relaxing into the knowledge that Aziraphale wouldn’t hurt him, wouldn’t mistreat him, wouldn’t abandon him. He wanted Crowley with his defenses swept away, fully confident that only pleasure would come of it. 

But there was precious little way for Crowley to intuit the difference between Aziraphale wanting to pin him down and shower him with love, and Aziraphale wanting to control him, especially not with the way Hell had primed him for suspicion and anger. Aziraphale had painted himself into a corner, bringing up the book before he’d brought up anything else, and now he was stuck sitting there, stewing over his own lack of patience.

Aziraphale willed his corporation into a more quiescent state, sweeping away the troublesome hormones and the soothing its nerves. Too bad, he thought, that he couldn’t do the same with his ethereal form and reduce his wanting to a more manageable level. It had been like a river threatening to overflow a dam, since the trial. Everything he’d been trying to stifle and suppress, for both their sakes, for hundreds of years, had suddenly come to a rolling boil, leaving him impatient and hungry and impulsive.

Everything he imagined doing with Crowley only led him to the next step, then the next; there was no imagined satiation, no sense of _enough_. He wanted to embrace Crowley, to kiss Crowley, to make love to Crowley, to join with Crowley in that ethereal and indivisible sense of wholeness which wouldn’t permit any outside force to ever separate them again. He wanted everything, and he wanted it three hundred years ago, and there was some yawning charybdian maelstrom at the center of him howling that he had no right to his cowardice if he could love like this in the first place.

It was appalling, how utterly out of control he felt now that the external checks on his desire had been removed. Aziraphale gave up on the thought of resting and made himself a cup of tea. Was this what it was like for other angels? He tried to imagine Michael or Gabriel really needing another like this, of not being complete within themselves, and found that he couldn’t. The others had all, so far as he knew, fit within their places. They had the regard of other angels, and they regarded them in turn, and maybe that was it--a diffusion of that need among uncounted legions of peers, without undue attachment to any particular one among their number.

Aziraphale had been cut off from that for so long, and he’d had only one being in all of creation he could look to as anything approaching a peer, and nature had taken its course. Aziraphale stirred a lump of sugar into the tea. Crowley had been in the same situation, but in demons that need for love had been amputated when they’d been stripped of grace, the mutilation complete. It was horrific, but in some ways Aziraphale supposed it was more merciful than leaving them with an appetite they could never satisfy, or with an appetite whose satisfaction caused them pain. They could take pleasure in it--or at least, Crowley seemed to be able to--but they didn’t require it to function. It was honey in the mouth of one who had no need to eat.

Aziraphale leaned on the table and stared at his tea and tried not to think of Crowley eating honeyed figs on the shore of Prespa, the beautiful lake not holding a candle to the demon’s face as they’d watched the builders mortar the last stones of St. Achillius’s church into place. Aziraphale had been enjoying his company more than he’d dare admit even now, never mind a thousand years ago, and Crowley was pleased with himself for having claimed one of the other islands--“For Hell, angel. It’s a thwarting.”--and the demon had absently let his tongue go forked and thin when he’d licked the last of the sweetness from his lips. They’d been shoulder to shoulder, not quite touching, and it would have been so easy for Aziraphale to lean in, tangle his fingers in Crowley’s long hair, and kiss him. So easy to press him down on the warm sand, slide a hand up that fine tunic, part those lean thighs...

A wave of desire strong enough to hurt swelled through Aziraphale’s frame, and perhaps there was some upper limit to the number of times he could think _I love you._ and swallow the words instead of saying them. Perhaps that was what had happened, and now he was a cup filled to the brim and not understanding why the rest of it was pouring over his edges. Crowley would return it, wouldn’t he? Eventually? As much as he was able, at any rate, and Aziraphale wouldn’t ask more than that. Crowley might tease a bit, or lord it over him the same way he did when Aziraphale needed something that Crowley hadn’t decided yet whether or not to grant, but he would want Aziraphale back all the same, he was sure.

Why else would Crowley still bring him little presents, still burst through the door and fling himself into a chair--_his_ chair--and demand to be petted and complimented and plied with wine, still do things like call and ask if it was all right that he dropped in without asking? Aziraphale had nothing left to offer, in a strictly pragmatic sense. There was no advantage to any of it, if Crowley didn’t find Aziraphale’s regard and company an advantage in and of themselves. No--he was being ridiculous. Aziraphale would handle it carefully and, when the time was right, he’d tell Crowley that he loved him, and the demon would at least bask in it and let him even if Crowley couldn’t or wouldn’t return it. It probably wouldn’t even cost Aziraphale too much of his dignity.

Aziraphale sighed and folded himself into the chair Crowley always stole when the opportunity presented itself--and dash it all, he wasn’t stealing anything, it was Crowley’s chair, and there was no sense thinking it wasn’t--and drank his tea. He comforted himself with the thought that it wasn’t anything particular to him, or a reflection on Aziraphale’s own lovability or lack thereof--it was simply the natural result of Crowley spending six thousand years under Hell’s bootheel. Crowley was contrarian and defensive and waspish, and why wouldn’t he be? 

Hell’s wrath was unpredictable and disproportionate, and the complete perversion of the truth was their stock and trade. There hadn’t ever even been a greater purpose or reason for the ugliness--it was simply that the demons could, that no one was going to stop them. 

Aziraphale could still feel the thick air clogging his lungs, the press of bodies, the weight of thousands of angry stares all focused on him, waiting to revel in his pain and his humiliation, his helplessness in the face of his own death. That was what had been waiting for Crowley, his reward for saving the world. His reward for caring for Aziraphale.

The only thing that was a surprise, after six thousand years of that, was that Crowley didn’t lash out more often or in worse ways than he did. Aziraphale just needed to be gentle and trustworthy, and Crowley would respond in time.


	5. Chapter 5

Aziraphale had managed to get himself back under control, more or less, by the time the demon himself sauntered through the front door with lunch.

“Coconut curry, angel,” he announced, depositing the bag on the table. His cocked his head at Aziraphale’s choice of seat but didn’t say anything. “They had some semolina cake they were willing to part with, too.”

“Oh.” Aziraphale couldn’t help the smile that graced his lips. It had been ages.

Crowley sprawled out on the loveseat, grinning. He had a cup of what smelled like chai in one hand, and he jerked his chin at the bag. “Don’t be shy--they promised it was the best curry in Mayfair, and I don’t know but that I believe them.”

“You’re in a good mood,” Aziraphale said. He waved a hand, and the bag with its cartons was replaced with proper dishes and cutlery. Crowley shook his head minutely, and Aziraphale tamped down a sigh and got rid of the second setting. Crowley ate--Aziraphale knew he did, he’d seen the inside of Crowley’s refrigerator--and one of these days, he was going to ferret out what it was that made Crowley so hesitant about eating around _him_.

“Your angelic interference didn’t have even the slightest effect on my fomenting,” Crowley said, resting his head against the cushions. “None of my work went even the least bit to waste.”

“Ah.” Aziraphale made a face. “Good?”

“Well, not in the regular sense, obviously.” Crowley took his glasses off without being asked and tossed them onto the side table. “But I suppose yes, in the colloquial sense.”

“What’ve you even been up to?” Aziraphale asked. He knew he didn’t really want an answer, and that it was probably something he’d find distasteful if not actively horrible, but he couldn’t help it. 

Crowley gave him a sly grin. “No rest for the wicked, angel. Inspiring pride here, wrath there, a bit of greed and envy all around.”

“I didn’t think you went in for that sort of thing, usually.” It had been systemic things, mostly, with a generous space left for humans to choose their fate and their actions for themselves. Aziraphale had found it a bit kinder than the typical demonic habit of fastening onto a person like a lamprey and gnawing at them for years and years until their soul was a wizened shell of its former self. Crowley’s methods might have been just as destructive on a grand scale, but it wasn’t like a person was done for just because they were stuck taking the motorway to work every day. But maybe it had been a numbers game, and Crowley’s tastes ran in a different direction when he wasn’t trying to burnish his reputation Downstairs.

Aziraphale glanced at Crowley, concerned. The demon really did look far too pleased with himself.

“I’m trying new things. Finding myself, really. What do I want to do, now that I can do anything I want?” Crowley’s smile widened. “Turns out, I want to send a few colleagues’ long-term pet projects completely off the rails.”

“Oh, dear.”

Crowley threw his head back and laughed. “Yes--that’s exactly what they’ll be saying Downstairs once the back-stabbing and leaking to the press starts in earnest, I think. ‘Oh, dear.’ Whole rotten pile’s going to come crashing down in a wave of recriminations and public repentance and disgraced retirements and righteous fury and petitions to the crown and lawsuits and sweaty, desperate interviews on the nightly news in under a month, mark my word. Be able to hear everybody blessing up a storm all the way from the celestial throne room once it happens, too.”

“Well done, I suppose?” Aziraphale offered.

Crowley waved a hand and wrinkled his nose. “Evilly done. Properly wicked. And self-interested! Let’s see ‘em salvage a commendation out of everyone swearing to go forth and sin no more.”

“As you say.” Aziraphale smiled fondly. He glanced at the food. “You sure you won’t have any?”

“All yours, angel.”

The curry was, in fact, quite delicious, and Crowley watched him eat with his customary intensity, eyes half-lidded and soft during the necessary lulls in conversation. Maybe that was why Crowley didn’t eat around him, Aziraphale thought--precious little point to it if the demon was just going to focus every ounce of his attention on Aziraphale and leave nothing to spare for enjoying his own meal.

“So, what’d you think of the novel?” Crowley asked, once he’d miracled away the empty bowls and dirty dishes.

“I’ve been trying not to,” Aziraphale said, unable to keep the distaste out of his voice. It might have been different if it had been anyone but Gabriel, but God forgive him, he still couldn’t think of the last few years of Gabriel’s pompous judgment and cold-blooded war-mongering without a burst of righteous anger. The very idea of reading about Gabriel’s erotic adventures with a Prince of Hell made him want to ask Crowley to set something on fire.

“Not even as a possible key to this whole mystery?” Crowley raised his eyebrows. “I mean, yeah, I get that it’s a bit on the ugh side, given the archangel in question, but if I could take one for the team and read up on Ligur’s extracurriculars--”

“It was more,” Aziraphale interrupted, “a question of whether or not it was one of yours. It wasn’t, you said. That bit cleared up, it’s rather lost its appeal.”

He regretted his choice of words immediately. Crowley tilted his head but didn’t press the issue, simply drank his chai in silence, eyes too watchful, too questioning, until a customer strolled in. Aziraphale frowned and tried to will her right back out again, but she continued poking about the section vaguely devoted to self-improvement in flagrant disregard for his desire for her to leave. Crowley watched his increasingly nervy glances in that direction, a smile tugging at his lips.

“You want me to shoo her out for you, angel?” 

Aziraphale glanced at him, at once grateful for and irritated by the offer. Crowley thought it was amusing, the discomfort this was causing him. Crowley was willing to make it go away again without being asked. The demon got to his feet as if drawing his whole corporation up by a string, ambled over to the woman, leaned against the shelf she was looking at, and smiled. 

Aziraphale flushed, guilty. What sort of angel literally sicced a demon on someone? Even if the demon in question was Crowley, it still wasn’t done, was it?

The woman stared at Crowley mutely for a few minutes, then nodded dreamily and left.

“What did you do?” Aziraphale asked, regret worrying at him. He hadn’t felt anything infernal, and he hadn’t noticed anything particularly nefarious.

“Well, she doesn’t need a self-help book when she knows how to help herself, does she?” Crowley asked, smirking. “Want me to lock the door in case anyone else takes it into their head that you might sell them a book, solely on account of you being the proprietor of a bookshop?”

“Might as well,” Aziraphale said. He should have just left the sign flipped to closed after he’d woken up in such a state. “Really, though, what did you _do_?”

Crowley threw the bolt, flipped the sign, and miracled the blinds closed and the shades drawn for good measure. He glanced back over his shoulder at Aziraphale. “Inspired her to be a little more selfish, a little less guilty, and a lot more confident. Right those bits, the other stuff has a tendency to take care of itself, doesn’t it?”

“In my experience? No,” Aziraphale said. “Not for the better, anyway.”

“Splitting hairs, angel.” Crowley’s eyes narrowed as he moved among the shelves, and Aziraphale wished he’d come sit back down. Crowley’s stillness had to be paid for somehow, and the usual coin was a burst of ungrounded energy and frenetic activity immediately to follow. Aziraphale could hardly count himself surprised, given the demon’s quietude during lunch, but it didn’t mean he had to like it. “Why do you have all those, anyway? I’d’ve thought you wouldn’t mind parting with that sort of pap.”

“I seem to recall you being responsible for a fair bit of it.”

“Strictly business,” Crowley said firmly. “And even then, I never claimed it was worth anything. I mean, I’m sure the occasional one written and edited by well-meaning, competent, ethical professionals got through quality control, same as the occasional writer manages to slip a bit of artistry into airport thrillers and so forth, but not the sort of thing I thought you went for.”

“Well, if you must know--”

“Oh, I must.” Crowley circled around to the shelf containing the modern stuff Aziraphale wasn’t quite sold on but hadn’t been able to quite let go of again and, in some cases, consign to the rubbish bin of history by doing so. Aziraphale shifted uncomfortably in his chair. 

It was unnerving, hearing Crowley stalking about but not being able to see him, and Aziraphale tested the feeling, trying to find the source of his own unease. He realized that Crowley was practically never somewhere else when they were together, and that was an odd thing not to have recognized before, wasn’t it? 

Crowley didn’t like letting Aziraphale out of his sight, when they were together--Aziraphale had picked up on that much over the years. It had taken Crowley so long to really trust him, even as Crowley was constantly proposing little favors or wagers or outings. It had been like some ridiculous game of chicken, with Crowley venturing close, closer, _too close_, always ready to scramble back to a safe distance in case that was the day that Aziraphale bared his teeth or went for a sword or spread his wings and called down Heaven’s wrath. 

Aziraphale could wander about to his heart’s content, lost in thought or rambling on about some topic or other, and be sure that when he stopped or came back to himself or began paying attention to his surroundings again, Crowley would be perched on something or wedged into a corner or loitering somewhere no farther than the edge of Aziraphale’s vision.

“If you must know,” Aziraphale tried again. He twisted in his seat so that he could watch the flickering shadow of Crowley’s movement on the other side of the books, the dark of his clothes appearing in the gaps between tome and shelf and then moving on, letting the light back in a moment later. _Skulking_, Aziraphale thought. That’s what he was doing. “If you must know, it’s nice to see people making an effort to be better. Even if they don’t follow through, them picking up a book like that shows they see a problem and want to solve it. It’s them listening to their better natures.”

“Mmm.” Crowley’s quiet grunt was noncommittal, and Aziraphale frowned. He’d been bracing for laughter, or some cynical retort. Nothing so dire as when he’d turned everyone’s guns real in response to Aziraphale’s cant about them lending weight to a moral argument, but it beggared belief that Crowley would let him get away with describing reading a self-help book as indicative of anything more than boredom. And then Crowley was speaking again, his voice soft. “Here you are.”

“What was that?” Aziraphale asked. He gave up on getting a comfortable view of Crowley from the chair and got to his feet, turning the corner just in time to see Crowley slowly and gently tear a page out of the book in his hands. “Crowley!”

Crowley looked up from the book, his gaze settling on Aziraphale’s face as he quite deliberately tore a second page.

“Stop that this instant, you--”

Crowley flipped the book closed and held it up so Aziraphale could see the cover, an inscrutable look on his face. His mouth was crooked with something approaching a smirk, but there was a question in his eyes, all of it too deep below the surface for Aziraphale to read.

“Well,” Aziraphale said, composing himself. “I suppose I did say you could.” He shook his head, his eyes tracing the glossy gold ‘Pygmalion’ stamped in graceful script on the brown cardstock cover. “How the devil did it even get in here?”

“You know what I want to know?” Crowley asked conversationally, leaning on the shelf.

It was Aziraphale’s turn for the noncommittal hum, the studied languor of Crowley’s pose promising treacherous ground ahead.

“You loved _Caesar and Cleopatra_ to bits. Dragged me to see it a half-dozen times, probably went by yourself another few.”

“It was very satisfying,” Aziraphale said, crossing his arms. 

“You thought _Candida_ was the bee’s knees.”

“Everybody liked _Candida_, you can’t fault me for that.” He’d been hearing chatter about it everywhere for a full week before he’d been able to get Crowley into the theater with him.

“Oh, if we’re talking faults, then allow me to point out that--and it pains me to say this out loud, but you did--you even liked _Androcles and the Lion_.” 

“It was an excellent way to deliver appropriate moral precepts to children, and the actors had perfect comic timing,” Aziraphale told him, bravado failing him at last. “You know, if you had something against Shaw, you could have just said--”

Crowley tilted his head and waved the book in his hands. “But this one?”

“I’m allowed to dislike a play, aren’t I?” Aziraphale huffed.

“Angel, you didn’t dislike it, you utterly and completely _loathed_ it. You went straight to bed and didn’t come out from under the pillows for nigh on a week after opening night.”

Aziraphale could feel his cheeks heat. “I did no such thing.” 

All he’d wanted was to curl up with something gentle and a nice cup of chamomile… 

No. All he’d wanted was to curl up in Crowley’s arms and lay his head on Crowley’s shoulder, but he’d known better than to ask for that, to _want_ that. He’d changed into his softest, warmest pajamas and curled up in bed with a cup of tea and a treatise by one of the ecstatic philosophers he very much hoped were right about everything.

Aziraphale glared at Crowley, but the demon’s eyes were back on the book, and he steadfastly refused to acknowledge Aziraphale’s irritation.

“You threatened to swear off the theater at large,” he said, his tone as light as if he’d brought up the chance of rain later. He flipped the book back open to a seemingly random page and began teasing it out of the binding, each little rip as the paper resisted letting go of its glue and thread like a pinch of salt dusted onto a fresh wound.

“I would never, and you know it.” Aziraphale simply hadn’t been in the mood to go out for a few weeks, which had been more than enough for Crowley to try to insist on it at every opportunity. 

The attention would have been gratifying if it hadn’t been yet another exercise in contrariness, completely unmoored from any actual desire for Aziraphale’s company. Crowley had turned into an utter nuisance for the duration, slinking around and trying everything from dreadful newspaper headlines to chocolates and botanical exhibitions to bait Aziraphale into an engagement. It had been perfectly awful around being awfully perfect. In quieter moments, Aziraphale had been able to flatter himself that this was what it might be like if Crowley ever deigned to court him, or actively solicit his regard--that Crowley might finally throw caution to the wind and slither into bed with him and beg for his approval.

“_I_ know you wouldn’t, but you certainly seemed to think you would.” Crowley tore another page out, this time in one long, steady strip, his eyes on the ragged edge of the paper instead of Aziraphale’s face, as if the tear was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. “Which left me wondering what on Earth could possibly have upset you so much about the whole thing.”

“You’ve been wondering why _Pygmalion_ upset me for, what, a hundred years?” Aziraphale scoffed. “And now you’ve decided to ask about it as a respite from turning my copy into confetti?”

“Well, see,” Crowley said slowly, flipping through the remaining pages. His eyes narrowed at one, and out it came with a decisive tear. “I didn’t really want to know the answer. Now that it doesn’t matter quite so much…”

He looked up, meeting Aziraphale’s eyes and cocking his head, the gesture less a question than a challenge. Aziraphale grimaced. Of course Crowley wasn’t just going to drop it, of course Crowley was going to throw it back in his face.

“As I recall, you thought it was rather good,” Aziraphale snapped, falling back a pace. Crowley had seemed to be enjoying himself thoroughly by the end of the fifth act, and it had only served to make Aziraphale that much more miserable and hopeless. Of all Shaw’s plays that Aziraphale had dragged him to, this was the one Crowley had actually appreciated.

“That’s why you hated it?” Crowley asked, eyebrows climbing.

“No, of course not!” Aziraphale stopped himself short and looked away. “I just didn’t like it, that’s all.”

Crowley snorted and tore out another page, and Aziraphale wondered sourly if Crowley was planning to start directly on his nerves, next. “You have never just _not liked_ something in your entire life, angel.”

“I might as well ask why you liked it,” Aziraphale said. He could wrestle the book away from Crowley easily, but that was hardly the point. Crowley blinked at him and then looked away, his lips pursing. “See? It’s hardly the easiest thing to articulate, is it?”

“I can articulate it just fine,” Crowley said, wrenching a fistful of pages out of the binding in one go. “It’s just beside the point, which is why you didn’t like it.”

“Why would I like it?” Aziraphale snatched the remains of the play out of Crowley’s hands and stepped back out of reach. “That blasted man makes a wreck of the poor girl’s life for sport, turns her into a spectacle in front of the whole world, ruins her for anything she can respect, and then he can’t even treat her with an ounce of kindness the whole time. What’s there to like about any of it?” Crowley stared at him, eyes wide, and Aziraphale shook his head. “She doesn’t ask for much--she only wants to be a little more than she is--and he just tears her whole existence to shreds on a lark. Because he’s bored, and it amuses him for a bit to do it, and it doesn’t harm him any, so why not? And then once she’s got nothing to go back to, what does he do? Apologize? Make amends? No, of course not--he wants her stuck with him. It’s an awful ending, and an awful situation, and I don’t see why people insist on seeing it as romantic.”

Crowley bit his lip and looked down at the pages he’d strewn about on the floor as if he was seeing them for the first time, as if someone else had stood there ripping them out of their binding piece by piece. He snapped his fingers, and they vanished, leaving the volume in Aziraphale’s hands whole and sturdy again.

“I knew I didn’t want to know the answer,” Crowley murmured, and Aziraphale frowned at the tremor in his voice. His lips twitched, and he swallowed, and then he rubbed his eyes and exhaled slowly.

“You did ask,” Aziraphale pointed out, brows knitting. He felt as if he was missing a beat, as if Crowley had forgotten the steps to this. If he wasn’t going to nod and say something appreciative--_“Never knew you had it in you, angel.”_\--then he would bluster a bit and tell Aziraphale he was being ridiculous, getting so worked up over something so silly, or he would disagree and start poking holes in Aziraphale’s argument, daring Aziraphale to poke holes right back.

“That I did.” Crowley curled his fingers around the back of his neck and looked up at the ceiling. “That I did.”

Aziraphale wanted to hurl the book across the room. He was meant to apologize for having an opinion now, most likely. He settled for shoving the book back onto the shelf with unnecessary vigor. Crowley _had_ asked; it wasn’t Aziraphale’s fault he didn’t like the answer. “It’s just--”

“For what it’s worth, angel,” Crowley said quietly, letting his hands fall to his sides, “I never meant to.”

“You never meant to?” Crowley winced at that, and Aziraphale gaped at him. “Never meant to what?”

“Ruin your life. Wreck things for you. Stick you here with me.”

It was Aziraphale’s turn to stare, and Crowley shrugged and spread his hands.

“I promise you, I didn’t. Not that it changes much, I suppose. Didn’t mean to do a lot of things, but they’re still done.” He conjured a sickly half-smile, shook his head, and turned away. “I’ll--well. Call if you need anything, yeah?”

Aziraphale could only remember the first time he’d had a horse shot out from under him, the way he’d been riding along one moment and flying out of his saddle the next, no preamble or warning or anything to soften the blow or bridge the gap between the world making as much sense as it ever did and the painful and unexpected collision with the ground. He’d been rabbiting on about a play, nothing more than a play, and the demon had somehow felt like it was aimed at him personally, and when had _Crowley_ ever behaved like that? 

Gabriel, certainly, with the way nothing was ever right, nothing was ever good enough, and when Aziraphale had managed to perform his duties flawlessly, there was the air of “Finally!” to his words rather than “Bravo!”. Michael, maybe, with the way she expected him to perform up to the standards of an archangel without any of the power or the foresight or the intel. Uriel, maybe, with the way they expected him to be a perfect soldier when he’d never asked for a sword, never asked to be on smiting duty, never wanted to hurt anyone. But Crowley? He’d always done his best, hadn’t he? He paid attention to what Aziraphale liked, to what he wanted, to what he needed. He helped, even if he did have to be coaxed into it. For a demon, he was practically Prince Charming.

And yet, he was pulling away, and he was going to _leave_, because Aziraphale had said something about a _play_, and it was all so absurd that Aziraphale couldn’t find the words that would make him stay.

It seemed only natural, when Aziraphale’s hand closed around Crowley’s arm. Just above the elbow, several layers of soft cloth giving way to lean muscle, the barely-there jolt of Crowley drawing up short when Aziraphale refused to budge or let go. Crowley’s head whipped around to stare at Aziraphale’s hand as if it was a sudden and unexpected growth, as if it had simply sprouted there on his arm and he had no context for Aziraphale touching him like this.

“You didn’t ruin my life,” Aziraphale said firmly. Crowley looked away again, too quickly this time, and Aziraphale smothered a gasp at what could only be the glitter of tears.

“Don’t, angel,” Crowley said, his voice a hoarse growl. “No more falling on swords to make other people happy. It doesn’t suit you. You deserve better.”

Aziraphale let his grip tighten, and he pulled Crowley back, closer, and Crowley’s frustrated hiss and attempt to yank his arm out of Aziraphale’s grasp only resulted in closing the gap between them.

“I wasn’t talking about you, Crowley.” Aziraphale reached out and wrapped his fingers around the edge of Crowley’s chin, turning his head so that Crowley was at least facing him. “I wasn’t talking about anyone, really, but I most certainly wasn’t talking about you. Anything that’s wrecked, it wasn’t you that did it.” He took a breath. “You’re the only thing that’s made any of this bearable, sometimes.”

Crowley stared, wordless, and Aziraphale could sense the effort it was taking him to breathe normally instead of letting his lungs run like a bellows, could sense the throbbing pulse beating double-time just under Crowley’s skin. God, but it would be so much easier to kiss him than to think of what it would have been like without him, caught up in the end of the world with no one there telling him he didn’t have to, that they couldn’t make him, that he could flee, that he could keep trying--that he wasn’t alone.

“If it hadn’t been for you…” Aziraphale licked his lips. He’d have stood there, sword in hand and surrounded by the carnage they’d all wanted so damned badly, covered in blood and ichor and ash, Heaven triumphant and him expected to just live with what that victory had cost for the rest of eternity. “I’d have gone mad. I know I would have.”

“Angel--” Crowley’s voice was soft, but the muscle under Aziraphale’s fingers was still tight, his arm almost shaking in Aziraphale’s grip.

“Just once, could you not argue?” Aziraphale asked. He wrapped his free arm around Crowley’s waist and pulled the demon against him, holding him close, and Crowley went rigid, his breath harsh in Aziraphale’s ears. “You’ve always treated me as an equal, haven’t you? You’ve played fair, or at least let me know when you were cheating. You’ve been kind, after a fashion, or at least you’ve always tried to be. But I think, most of all, it was that… that you acted as if I mattered. As if my attention, my opinion, my presence… as if it all had value.”

Aziraphale wound his other arm around Crowley’s waist, and Crowley’s hands found the front of his cardigan and twisted into the fabric, his eyes gone blank and distant with tears he refused to let fall.

“I suppose you might have ruined the life I had, after all,” Aziraphale continued, letting his thumb rub a comforting circle over Crowley’s bicep. “But it was a life I could only have had as, I don’t know. An unthinking cog in a machine. A sword in a pair of hands, pointed at whomever the closest archangel declared the enemy. Something terrible and witless and unfeeling. It wasn’t a life I wanted, and it certainly wasn’t one I asked for. And you weren’t half the brute about taking it away that my superiors were about making me live it. So.” He exhaled quietly, and Crowley was trembling against him now. “Say something, can’t you? Tell me you’re not going to leave the moment I let go, at least.”

“You deserve better, angel,” Crowley whispered. “You’ve always deserved better. Whatever you want--stay, go, lunches on alternate Tuesdays--I’ll try to abide by.”

“I want you to sit down with me and finish your tea and stop thinking that I find your company unpleasant, is what I want.” Aziraphale hugged him closer at the thought of the alternative to being stuck on Earth with Crowley, of Aziraphale having gotten free but losing Crowley to Hell’s wrath, of being properly stuck--_trapped_\--in Heaven’s sterile halls forever. He splayed his hand flat against Crowley’s back, between the shoulder blades, and felt Crowley’s heart beat against his palm. 

He wouldn’t have been strong enough to face Earth without Crowley, he was sure. He hadn’t been strong enough to face an Eden without people in it, and it was the same sort of certainty that made him imagine the waste of an eternity without a true companion. His arms tightened, and Crowley hissed.

“All right, angel, but you’re going to crack a rib if you don’t let up,” he said, trying to loosen Aziraphale’s grip on him.

“Sorry.” Aziraphale let go so abruptly that Crowley stumbled, and Aziraphale darted forward to steady him, hands back on Crowley’s waist and arm. “_Sorry!_ I didn’t mean to--well, you know what I meant.”

He sheepishly guided Crowley back to the couch, and the demon sat down and reached for his glasses. Aziraphale sat too close and reached for Crowley’s hand, and Crowley didn’t object when Aziraphale took it.


	6. Chapter 6

Aziraphale shivered and arched against the bed, hand stilling on his cock as he slid too close to a climax. He wanted to draw it out a bit longer, wanted to revel in it a bit more. Having Crowley in his arms had felt so right, and Crowley hadn’t pushed him away or writhed out of the embrace in horrified anger, and what if they’d done this years ago?

He imagined the feel of Crowley’s jacket giving under his fingers. It would have been so easy, that night they’d found out the world was ending, to sweep the demon into his arms and kiss him and tear off his clothes and lay him down in front of the fire and make him forget about the ticking bomb in the shape of a baby that Crowley had been handed earlier in the evening. Aziraphale’s hand began moving again, slowly, almost of its own accord. God, but he _needed_ this. He’d needed it then, needed it for centuries.

Crowley would have protested, the way he always did when Aziraphale was too close to giving in to Crowley’s own wiles. He’d have said, “Best not.”

He’d have looked after Aziraphale wistfully, wanting what he wouldn’t let himself have, and Aziraphale would have known they only had eleven short years left, and he wouldn’t have settled for Crowley’s retiring denial.

It wouldn’t have taken much, that night. Crowley’d been ready to forget, ready to indulge, ready to grab the pleasures of the Earth with both hands. Aziraphale could have caught him up, run his hands over Crowley’s skin, kissed Crowley’s lips, and the demon would have gone wanting and wanton in his hands.

Crowley might have even let him claim that they were finally christening the shop, might have let him do practically anything that night, if he’d only tried. He could have kissed his way down Crowley’s chest as Crowley squirmed and protested under him, could have whispered, “What’s left to lose, if the world is ending?”, could have tempted the demon into taking the risk. Crowley might have moaned when Aziraphale’s tongue found his cock, might have gone wordless and panting at the last, might have collapsed into a shaking, sated mess under the onslaught of Aziraphale’s affection.

Crowley might have let Aziraphale bring himself off against the demon’s belly, tongue shoved into the demon’s mouth, nails dragging over the demon’s skin. Crowley might have let Aziraphale wind a blanket around them afterward, cradling the demon in his arms as they took comfort in each other again and again. Crowley might have slipped a hand between them, found Aziraphale’s cock ready and aching for him, closed those fingers meant for artistry around Aziraphale’s member, stroked--

Aziraphale groaned and threw his head back, and he came with a delicious flood of warmth that loosened muscles he’d forgotten his corporation even had. He relaxed against the pillows, panting, and after a few moments of sanity, he smiled wryly to himself. 

Crowley would never have let him get away with any of it, but what was the harm of a fantasy or two? 

And after all, Crowley had let Aziraphale hold his hand and sit too close and, after a while, Crowley had leaned on him and rested his head on Aziraphale’s shoulder and apologized for tearing up the book. And a little while after that, Crowley had kicked off his shoes and curled up against Aziraphale’s side and just rested there for such a long time, and Aziraphale had brushed his hair back from his forehead, and Crowley had let him.

“Thank you for staying,” Aziraphale had said. _“I love you,”_ he’d meant.

“Could hardly leave when you’re getting soppy and soft about every little thing, could I?” Crowley had grumbled. “Who even knows what you’d get up to, left to your own devices? Probably start calling your old bosses up, telling them you forgive them.”

“I wouldn’t.” 

Aziraphale thought of Michael with the holy water, of Sandalphon gloating when they’d dragged Crowley away. He wouldn’t. It had been an empty accusation, just Crowley marshaling a show of querulousness to cover for the vulnerability of his position, but all the same, Aziraphale had to acknowledge it to himself.

“What did you like so much about _Pygmalion_?” Aziraphale had asked eventually, when the shadows outside had lengthened against the blinds and Crowley’s lanky frame had gone liquid and loose, molding itself to fit against Aziraphale’s side. It had been wonderful, and he hadn’t dared disturb it to free his arm, which might have done better draped over Crowley’s shoulders.

Crowley had shifted against him in response, a slow coiling away that had made Aziraphale want to pull Crowley into his lap and wrap his arms around Crowley’s waist again. Crowley sighed, a long, quiet hiss of breath.

“Come, now. You said you could articulate it just fine,” Aziraphale cajoled. “You picked all his other plays apart by the seams afterwards, what made that one special?”

“Well, it’s just.” Crowley had made a face and looked away, and he’d shuddered in a way that was more a slow shiver rippling up his frame. “It’s about like you said, innit? He’s rude to her, makes a big show of not thinking much of her, calls her names. But under it all, he does care. When he thinks she’s really gone, he has an absolute fit trying to get her back. When she says she’s done with him, he says, ‘I’ll give you anything you want, just come home again.’ _I miss you, I want you by my side, I know I don’t show it the way I ought, but I do._ He goes to pieces, when he thinks he might really lose her. It’s not romantic, not like you were going on about people taking it, but it’s… hopeful, I suppose you could call it. You know--you can see them sorting it out, eventually.”

It had been hard not to lean over and kiss his forehead at that, hard not to tease him about it being a sweet take on the text, hard not to ask which of them was being soft now. He’d settled for reaching for Crowley’s hand again, and smiling when Crowley had reached back this time instead of simply letting Aziraphale do as he would.

But Crowley hadn’t curled back up against his side, and Crowley had eventually made his excuses and gone back to his flat, and Crowley certainly wasn’t going to let Aziraphale hold him and kiss him and make passionate love to him on the rug in front of the hearth. 

Aziraphale could spend a few treasured moments to himself imagining what it would be like if Crowley ever did, but that was all. He sighed and miracled himself clean again. At least they’d settled the whole idea of Crowley not being welcome, or Crowley having to ask before he dropped by, or Crowley having anything to apologize for. The demon going skittish and remote was the last thing either of them needed now that they only had each other.

Aziraphale pulled the blankets back over himself, snuggling down into the warmth of them. He’d turned the bed into something of a nest in the days since they’d won their freedom, making it big enough for two and layering it with extra pillows and a luxurious comforter and anything else that let him think Crowley might be tempted if he saw it. Crowley _wouldn’t_, but if Crowley _did_, Aziraphale didn’t want to be caught unprepared.

He miracled himself up a cup of tea and the book he’d been reading before Crowley had turned up with lunch. Crowley had felt so damned good against his side, content to just _be_ for once. What might it be like with Crowley stretched out next to him in his bed, their shared warmth heating the covers, the smell of Crowley’s skin, Crowley’s hair, lingering on the sheets long after he’d left? What might it be like to read his book and sip his tea with Crowley’s limbs tangled around his, languid and heavy with sleep? To rest his hand on Crowley’s bare shoulder, to stroke his fingers through Crowley’s hair, and be rewarded with Crowley nestling more firmly against him?

Aziraphale stretched and tried to banish the burst of longing those thoughts stirred. It was no sense wanting what he couldn’t have yet, no sense grasping after things he couldn’t quite reach. He needed to be patient, and careful, and prudent, if he was going to have a decent chance of getting Crowley into the bed he’d made for them. Crowley would need to trust him, and Crowley would need to be willing to hear anything Aziraphale said as an invitation instead of looking for hidden ultimatums or demands, and Crowley would need to believe him when Aziraphale said he loved him. Thinking that he really might be able to rush things along was a fantasy with a poison pill lodged in its center, a temptation he’d succumb to if he let himself.

No--slow and steady would win the race.

***

“Y’know, I think I--” Crowley broke off and stared at the glass in his hands, as if he’d forgotten that he’d made a sizeable dent in a bottle of scotch Aziraphale had been saving for a special occasion. He blinked and pursed his lips. “That is, I may have--bluh. Is it just me, or has it gotten difficult to speak in here?”

Aziraphale sighed and looked up from his newspaper. Crowley had shown up halfway to drunk, stared at the angel in his customary chair, and thrown himself onto the couch, and then he’d refused to budge for a full hour. He’d been in a taciturn mood in spite of it, and then the moment Aziraphale’s back had been turned, he’d made a move on the rarities and luxuries stowed away in a locked cupboard in the kitchenette. Aziraphale hadn’t even realized that Crowley knew about the cupboard’s contents, though it stood to reason--Crowley had given him the lion’s share of it. The icing on the cake had been Crowley refusing to share the bottle he’d stolen out of it.

Another two hours later, and the sulky demon had finally decided to open his mouth for something besides swilling irreplaceable scotch. Pity none of it had been terribly communicative.

“It’s the drink, dear,” Aziraphale said primly.

“Hrm.” Crowley frowned at the glass. “Can’t be. Drink’s never betrayed me, and it never will. We’re _inseprble_.”

“You could try sobering up just the least little bit,” Aziraphale suggested.

“Pfft.” Crowley slithered down the cushions so he was stretched out even farther on the sofa and glared at nothing. “Oh! Right. I was going to tell you.”

“Tell me what?” Aziraphale put the newspaper aside. If Crowley wasn’t going to stop trying to talk, and Crowley had something to tell him that had him drinking like a Hittite, then it was probably a good idea to listen.

“That book.”

Aziraphale’s heart skipped a beat. “Oh?”

He was very proud of how casual he sounded, of how level and disinterested his tone was. _Oh, we’re in for a spot of weather tomorrow? I’ll be sure to bring an umbrella, cheers._

“Well, you know what they say. Follow the money and all that.”

“And?”

“And there isn’t any,” Crowley said triumphantly, throwing his arms wide. Aziraphale barely had the presence of mind to keep the scotch from sloshing out of the glass still in one of Crowley’s hands.

“What do you mean, there isn’t any?” Perhaps--most likely, in fact--Aziraphale’s initial shell-shocked assumption that there’d been millions of copies floating about had been wrong, but things didn’t wind up in remainder bins by themselves. Somebody had to have paid to print the damned thing, arranged for distribution, and so forth.

“I mean, all the proceeds went to charity. Halfway houses, reintegration counselling, addiction treatment centers.” Crowley grinned. “Sounds very much like your lot, dunnit?”

“Michael and Gabriel were dictating racy novels about themselves to fund things I couldn’t get them interested in if their grace depended on it?” Aziraphale asked, his skepticism creeping into his voice.

“My money’s on Phanuel, personally. Kind of their gig, and I always got the sense they never understood what everybody else’s nose was in the air about,” Crowley told him. “Plus they were a pretty dab hand at inspiring poetry and prophecy, so leaning on some human to write a dirty book or two’s hardly outside their bailiwick, is it?”

Aziraphale considered the possibility. He’d met Phanuel a few times, but it had been brief and they’d never seen fit to inquire into how things were going on Earth, so Aziraphale had never had an excuse to prolong the conversation. He really didn’t know whether it was a reasonable supposition or not. “But still. With demons?”

Crowley shrugged, the gesture too pronounced, too sharp, then polished off the scotch in his glass. “If it was real…”

Aziraphale flushed. As hard as it seemed to credit anything about the affairs in the books being real, there wasn’t really a reason to think they hadn’t happened. Not how the novels had said, no--Aziraphale wasn’t an idiot. But that there’d been an illicit connection, that they’d met privately, intimately, engaged each other in ways they weren’t supposed to? Aziraphale couldn’t imagine he and Crowley were the only two who’d run up against each other and recognized a kindred spirit where they should have seen nothing more than an enemy.

“If it was real,” Crowley continued after a moment, “if there was no shame in the doing, then maybe they didn’t see the shame in the telling.”

“If.” Aziraphale’s lips puckered. Such a loaded word, that _if_.

Crowley pushed himself up into a pronounced slouch from his pronounced sprawl and refilled his glass. “Y’know, it’s…”

“Yes?” Aziraphale prompted, after the moment stretched out with no further statement.

“Nothing,” Crowley said, shaking his head. He sipped his scotch.

“Mmm.” What would Crowley do, he wondered, if he sat down next to him and took the liquor away and asked him again?

“It’s just.” Crowley’s hand twitched to his face, fingers moving to adjust glasses that weren’t there, and they fastened around the back of his neck instead. He exhaled noisily and took another drink.

“Maybe you should slow down,” Aziraphale suggested gently.

“Liquid courage,” Crowley muttered. He stared at the ceiling and licked his lips. “I was thinking.”

“You’re always thinking, Crowley.”

“I am not.” The demon fixed him with an offended glare. “That’s slander, that is. A demon, thinking. Next you’ll be telling me it’s highly improbable that the Ineffable Plan called for Hell to win and kick everybody out of the nice offices.”

“That would seem to make the Fall a bit redundant, wouldn’t it?” Aziraphale said, trying for a smile. He couldn’t quite pull it off. Hell’s eagerness to test themselves in battle seemed ridiculous in the face of it, but no one had ever accused God of being efficient or predictable. It wasn’t impossible that Hell would have won.

Crowley chuckled to himself and smirked at him, but there was a grimness, a resoluteness underneath it that Aziraphale hadn’t seen in a while. “I was thinking, earlier, for a bit, about how long you’d been sitting on this.”

Aziraphale could feel the sudden stillness that descended on the bookshop in his blood, in his bones. He could feel it down to his core, in the way time seemed to slow. It had nothing of Crowley’s meddling, for once.

“Oh?” he managed. There was nothing nonchalant or easy about it now; it sounded like a squeak, even in his own ears.

“And how you seemed sure it was me.” Crowley rolled the glass between his palms and took a breath. “And how many times you’d seemed to have read it.” He exhaled slowly, and his voice was quiet, when he said, “And why you might be asking about it now, instead of before everything went pear-shaped.”

Aziraphale wondered if it would be untoward to dive for the scotch. Liquid courage, indeed. His mouth was dry, and his heart felt like it was squeezing the air out of his lungs with every outsized beat, and it was, possibly, his own poisonous hope that was making him think Crowley might be wanting the truth instead of fearing it. Aziraphale folded his hands in his lap to keep them from giving him away. 

“It… it seemed dangerous to ask, before. You know, as well as I do, how many things were so terribly dangerous, before. So many things we just couldn’t--at all.” He gave up on trying to keep still and rubbed his face. “Even say, I mean. Even hint at. As you said, it took the end of the world being announced just to, ah, throw caution to the wind and let you sleep it off here.”

It had taken them so absurdly long to even get to _thank you_ and _be careful_ and _don’t be stupid, it’s too dangerous_. They’d only managed to add _I’m sorry_ and _don’t go_ when the world had been about to end, for God’s sake.

“Heh.” The tiny smile that he’d conjured slid off Crowley’s face again. He looked at his hands, at the glass, at the liquor catching the last of the day’s light as the sun sank past the neighboring building’s roofline. “I was thinking that maybe you seemed a little…” His lips twisted. “A little.” He swallowed. “Possibly.”

Aziraphale waited. He didn’t know how to finish Crowley’s sentence, didn’t know what to offer, didn’t know what it was Crowley wanted him to say. An assurance that Crowley wasn’t wrong, that there’d been so much import in Aziraphale asking now? An assurance that Crowley was imagining things, that Aziraphale would never expect anything like that of him? _I want you, I need you, I love you._ Too much, or not enough?

“Disappointed,” Crowley said finally, so softly Aziraphale could easily believe he’d imagined it around the thundering of his blood.

“And if I was?” Aziraphale asked. He clasped his hands together in his lap to stop his fingers from trembling. Not disappointed, not exactly, not with Crowley edging closer and not running, not yet. _Please want me back, please stay with me, please be capable of love._

Crowley’s jaw worked soundlessly for a long moment, and then he downed the rest of his scotch in one go. “I guess it would… I’d ask…” He shuddered. “Bless it, angel, really?”

He finally looked at Aziraphale, his eyes gone entirely amber, and he looked so forlorn that Aziraphale couldn’t help going to him. He gathered Crowley in his arms, careful and gentle, and he tucked Crowley’s head under his chin, and he kissed Crowley’s hair.

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale sighed. “I didn’t mean to upset you with it.”

“Well, you upset yourself pretty badly, too, so I suppose that’s some consolation,” Crowley muttered, his voice muffled by Aziraphale’s shirt. He wound his arms around Aziraphale’s waist and buried his face in Aziraphale’s chest, and Aziraphale tilted his head so he could kiss Crowley’s temple. “How long’ve you known?”

Aziraphale barely managed to choke back an undignified noise. In terms of cosmic blows, it fell somewhere between getting punched by an archangel and being attacked by a Duke of Hell. He stroked Crowley’s hair, those words rattling in his brain like a pebble in a tin can. “Known what?”

Crowley squirmed in his arms and hissed. “You’re really going to make me fucking say it?”

“I’m rather afraid we’re going to have to, at some point.” Aziraphale kissed his hair again. Crowley could feel Aziraphale’s heart pounding away against his sternum, he was sure, hear it beating away like a drum in the hollow of his chest. _How long have you known?_ “Don’t you think?”

Crowley hissed, softer and more drawn out this time, like a tire going properly flat after a nail had been pulled out.

“That I like you,” he said sullenly.

“Mmm.” Aziraphale squeezed Crowley’s shoulder. He could feel a burst of hysterical laughter starting somewhere just below his diaphragm. “I like you, too.”

Crowley winced. “Don’t make fun.”

“I’m not making fun,” Aziraphale assured him. “I like you quite a bit.”

Crowley growled and squirmed again, and Aziraphale bent his head so that he could rest it on Crowley’s shoulder. He’d just… said it. Just like that. And Crowley was blushing and scowling and making absolutely no move for the door or to push him away.

“I might conceivably even--” Crowley huffed. “Look, I saved your stupid prophecy book, and I helped save the world, and I didn’t even set Gabriel on fire when I went back to Heaven for you because I knew it’d upset you in spite of him deserving it tenfold. I shouldn’t _have_ to say it.”

“I love you, too, Crowley.”

Crowley’s nails dug into the small of his back through his clothes, and they sat like that for long enough that Aziraphale almost trusted himself to answer when Crowley asked, “Anything… anything else you want to get off your chest, there, angel?”

Aziraphale made himself let go. Fear and hope in equal measure, and he still couldn’t tell which side the coin was looking to come down on. He straightened up and smoothed Crowley’s hair down, and those golden eyes just watched him.

“I don’t expect…” Aziraphale began. He sighed and took Crowley’s hands in his, brushing his thumbs over Crowley’s knuckles. “There is something else. I just--I don’t want you to think there’s any expectation on my part, if you don’t feel the same way. It’s not necessary, or even…” Aziraphale could feel his face turning scarlet. “It’s such a small part of what I feel that…”

_Liar_, his heart beat against his ribs. _Liar, liar, liar._

Except that he wasn’t, was he? If Crowley didn’t want, but Crowley stayed, and Crowley loved him… What was sexual desire, stacked against the rest of eternity together? A quirk of his corporation, easily banished. If that one little thread frayed, what was it to the whole cord? There was so much else to what he wanted, he didn’t need that last bit of it. Crowley was studying his face, brows furrowed, and he nodded slowly.

“I understand,” Crowley said. “I think.”

He nodded again, more firmly this time, and Aziraphale could breathe again. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath, hadn’t felt his corporation prodding him to do something about it, hadn’t felt anything but Crowley’s hands in his, Crowley’s eyes on him.

Crowley slumped back against the cushions and gave him a long look. 

“You know, it’s funny. There was a bit when I thought, well. You know, that you might be interested in…” He chuckled. “The book made it sound like it’d be fun, didn’t it? But then, if it’s just a small part of how you feel, it’s probably for the best.”

“Ah.” Aziraphale tried not to think about how sharp that felt, how deeply it cut.

“I mean, really.” Crowley spread his hands. “The Serpent of Eden against the Bookseller of Soho. Not much of a contest, is it?”

Aziraphale blinked at him, every gear in his brain grinding to a halt. “Excuse me?”

“And who even knows what would happen if the demon won the wrestling match?” Crowley continued, carrying on as blithely as if he was teasing Aziraphale over what to have for lunch instead of something that had been tormenting him for centuries. “Probably be horrible. Best not to chance it.”

“You awful--”

“I am magnanimously choosing not to pursue it out of consideration for your delicate corporation, and I’m being insulted for it.” Crowley clicked his tongue in disapproval and shook his head. “Honestly, angel--manners.”

Aziraphale tackled him to the rug before he could stop and think about what he was doing, and Crowley yelped and rolled them over, his whole body coiling reflexively. He braced a forearm across Aziraphale’s chest and grinned down at him.

“I’m here as a _guest_, and you just _attack_\--”

“You let yourself in and stole my scotch,” Aziraphale countered, pushing up and over with one hip. He pinned Crowley easily this time, and Crowley smirked.

“I left my scotch here on accident years ago and just figured out what happened to it.”

And just like that, his corporation was shifting, and he was going boneless and slithering under Aziraphale’s bulk. Aziraphale shoved a thigh between Crowley’s knees before his legs could become a tail, and he caught a fistful of Crowley’s hair and tilted his head back so that he had to meet Aziraphale’s eyes.

“That’s cheating!”

“Demon,” Crowley reminded him, his forked tongue flicking out slowly and very, very deliberately. Aziraphale could feel his world shrinking, narrowing, collapsing into nothing beyond this one room, with Crowley on the floor under him and taunting him with this and wanting him back like this. Had there ever been a moment when he’d wanted more or less than what Crowley was offering him, freely and without being asked?

Crowley smiled, lips sliding back over too-sharp teeth, and the next roll knocked over the coffee table. Some part of Aziraphale might have minded the mess, but Crowley’s hand caught at his belt, using the purchase to almost twist them apart, and he’d underestimated how damned strong the demon was. He’d underestimated how strong the demon was, and if he didn’t mind himself, Crowley was going to succeed, and Aziraphale’s arms would be empty, and everything in him cried out against it. 

It wasn’t long before their grappling had shirts rucked up and buttons popped off and hands sliding over sweat-slicked skin. When he finally pinned Crowley for good, they were panting into each other’s throats, and Aziraphale wanted nothing more than to tear the rest of their clothes off and see what Crowley’s panting would sound like when it was the result of a sweeter sort of exertion.

“Not much of a contest, indeed,” Aziraphale said.

“You planning on being merciless in victory, then?” Crowley asked, laughing.

Aziraphale’s eyes traced the column of his throat, the flush of his cheeks, the almost-round pupils in those lovely, shining eyes. He was beautiful. Beautiful, and more fragile than he’d ever admit to being, in need of careful handling he’d never stoop to asking for. “You’re very drunk, dear.”

Crowley caught his meaning and pouted at him. This close, Aziraphale wanted to sink his teeth into the lower lip and make the demon behave.

“I may be drunk, but I’ll have you know I didn’t cheat nearly so much as I could have.” The pout deepened, and he batted his eyelashes at Aziraphale. “I was practically good, for a demon.”

“Were you, now?”

“I think I deserve a reward for such sterling behavior, after all that.” He let his head fall back against the rug. “An incentive toward further acts of not cheating, if you will.”

Aziraphale leaned forward and kissed him, as hard and as deep as he’d always wanted. He didn’t stop until it was that or drown in it, and Crowley laughed softly, once he’d caught his breath again.

“Oh, that’ll do nicely, angel,” he purred.

Aziraphale scoffed and then dipped his head to mouth at Crowley’s throat, and the demon arched under him and groaned as his tongue dragged over Crowley’s skin. Aziraphale moved down half an inch and did it again, and Crowley bucked against him.

“Nngh,” he gasped. “That’s it, you bastard--I’m sobering up, and we’re doing this properly.”

“You don’t have to,” Aziraphale said, letting go of one of Crowley’s wrists so that he could card his fingers through sweat-damp hair. “There’s always tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that.”

It seemed marvelous, the way time was spread out ahead of them, now that they really could have what they wanted. _Please, please, don’t let this be another dream._ Crowley felt so real in his arms, and they’d made a proper mess of everything, and it didn’t seem like something he’d dream. It had never been this slapdash, or this ridiculous, or this sincere, in his dreams. He’d never been so very giddy with the thrill of it all, in his dreams.

“There isn’t, because if you don’t get on with it I am literally going to discorporate,” Crowley said. Crowley’d complained less, in his dreams. Aziraphale wanted to laugh, that same hysterical thing that had sunk its teeth in when Crowley had asked how long Aziraphale had known. _Oh, it’s been whole seconds, now._ He sucked idly at Crowley’s throat, just because he could, and it was better than anything Heaven had ever offered him. Crowley hissed petulantly and stretched his neck away from Aziraphale’s mouth. “Stop distracting me, this is complicated enough as it is--”

Aziraphale couldn’t help nipping at the skin where throat and shoulder joined, Crowley’s shirt pulled wide during their grappling and leaving so much flesh on glorious display, and Crowley moaned and writhed under him, frame going taut under Aziraphale’s body in an unmistakable climax. Crowley collapsed after another moment, his expression surprised and delighted and a bit overwhelmed.

“Oh, angel, look what you’ve done to me,” he murmured, closing his eyes.

Aziraphale groaned and tried not to laugh. “No. I forbid you from quoting that wretched book when we’re doing this.”

“Should’ve let me sober up, then,” Crowley said muzzily. He shook Aziraphale’s hand off his wrist and wrapped his arms around Aziraphale’s back instead. “Anyone ever tell you you’re absolutely ideal as a blanket?”

“You’re not going to sleep right now,” Aziraphale protested.

“What, you going to forbid that, too?” Crowley opened his eyes and smiled, a slow comfortable thing that spread across his face like a drop of ink uncoiling in a jar of water. “As has been pointed out, I’m very drunk, and now I’ve just had the most lovely orgasm, and you’re very warm.”

“We’re on the floor, dear.” They were on the floor, in the bookshop, and Crowley was going pliant and pleased in his arms. _I want you, I need you, I love you._ Not too much, it turned out.

“I can sleep anywhere, and it’s not like you’ve got a bed tucked away in here,” Crowley said, yawning. His hands settled on the small of Aziraphale’s back, slipping up under the ruined cardigan and the untucked shirt to find bare skin again. “I know you--you’re about as keen on sleep as a hummingbird with an amphetamine habit. Floor’s fine.”

Aziraphale let himself laugh, finally, at that. He wriggled out of Crowley’s arms over the demon’s objections, then scooped Crowley up and carried him to the stairs. He thought of how Crowley would look in just a few moments, spread out on that generous bed, sinking into a pleasant sleep amid the pillows and the comforters in Aziraphale’s bedroom, and he felt as if he must be glowing from the tender warmth that blossomed in his chest. Crowley _would_, and oh, how long he’d been hoping for this.

“I do have a bed, I’ll have you know.” He brushed another kiss over Crowley’s lips, and Crowley let his head rest on Aziraphale’s shoulder. “We’ll just have to see if it’s up to your apparently exacting standards.”

“Hmph.” Crowley tucked his face into the crook of Aziraphale’s neck, and his voice was so quiet Aziraphale wouldn’t have been able to hear him otherwise. “So long as you’re in it with me, angel, it’ll be perfect.”


	7. Chapter 7

Aziraphale frowned at the page in front of him, his brows knitting in consternation. 

“Really, Agatha?” he sighed. “_Everybody_ was the killer?”

It didn’t seem like a sporting solution to the mystery, really. Crowley stirred beside him, burrowing deeper under the blankets before stopping suddenly and sitting up. 

Aziraphale showed him the cover and arched an eyebrow. “This wasn’t one of yours, was it?”

“I, ah. Mmm.” Crowley stared at him, his eyes wide and yellow and darting from Aziraphale’s face to the book and back. “I might’ve, er, egged her on a bit?”

Aziraphale shook his head. “Getting poor Doyle to kill off Holmes wasn’t enough for you, you had to…” He put his hand to his eyes. “Not Poirot, too.”

“Wh--” Crowley hissed and looked around the room. “We’re.” He spread his hands. “We’re in your room.”

“Yes, dear.”

“We’re in your _bed_.”

“Yes, dear.” Aziraphale batted away a little sliver of worry. Crowley couldn’t possibly have been so drunk that he didn’t remember anything about the previous evening.

“Which you have, by the way.”

“I did tell you that, Crowley.”

The demon shoved his hair out of his face and stared at him, face unreadable.

“We’re in your room, in your bed, and…” He looked down and flicked out his tongue, then looked back up, his eyes narrowed. “And am I wearing your pajamas?”

Aziraphale flushed. That might have been pushing it. He knew the sort Crowley liked, when he slept in human form--he could have just as easily miracled up a black satin set any up-and-coming, jet-setting mad lad would have died for. He just hadn’t been able to resist the thought of Crowley wrapped up and dozing in a pair of _his_ pajamas.

“Well.” Aziraphale cleared his throat. “They could just as easily be your pajamas, now.”

Crowley glared at him, and a stray lock of hair picked that moment to ruin the effect by flopping back down over his forehead, and Crowley groaned.

“We’re in your room, in your bed, and I’m wearing your pajamas,” he said, combing his hair back with unnecessary force, “and you want to know about me inspiring Agatha fucking Christie.”

“Well, ah.” Aziraphale pursed his lips. “Was there something else you wanted to talk about instead?”

Crowley groaned again, longer and louder and three times as theatrically this time, and toppled back into the pillows. He stared at the ceiling, and Aziraphale put the book aside to prop his chin on the heel of his palm.

“I suppose I had all this coming, didn’t I?” Crowley asked, his gaze not budging from the plaster above them.

“Oh?” Aziraphale wanted to reach for him, to tell him it would all be all right, whatever he was upset about. They didn’t have to talk about it, really; they knew where they stood, now. That could be enough for a while.

“I knew what a bastard you could be, and I went and fell right in love with you anyway.” Crowley sighed, his irritation curdling into the beginnings of a sulk, and Aziraphale had no intention of letting him get lost in it.

He leaned over, caught Crowley’s face in his hands, and kissed him until the petulant creature melted under it. When Aziraphale sat back up, Crowley tried to follow his lips, and Aziraphale smiled but pressed him gently back down.

“You couldn’t actually get it out last night, you know,” Aziraphale said, letting his hand rest on Crowley’s stomach.

“It’s a hard thing to admit,” Crowley said defensively. “And I didn’t want to make you think that… I mean, it’s all right if you don’t. Like, I know of course you do, in that general, all-purpose way, because you’re that way with everybody. I’m not… I don’t need it to be more than it is, if that’s all you can do.”

“You do remember how this worked out for you last night, don’t you?” Aziraphale asked, bemused.

Crowley scoffed. “You don’t like being teased, and you especially don’t like me implying I’m going to beat you at something. Could’ve just been a natural reaction to--”

Aziraphale sighed and kissed him again, and Crowley’s hands slipped under his shirt this time, fingers digging into flesh and pulling him closer.

“If I didn’t love you, specifically and deeply, do you think I’d have let you ruin my favorite cardigan?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley’s mouth opened, but all he managed was a grunt. He winced slightly. “I’m sure it’s nothing I can’t, ah. Nothing I can’t fix. Buttons’ve got to be around he somewhere, there’s only so far they could’ve gotten.”

Aziraphale ran his fingers gently through Crowley’s hair. “Or break my favorite coffee table?”

“I feel like that was a bit of a joint effort there, angel,” Crowley murmured, his cheeks going pink.

“Or drink up all the scotch I’ve been saving for a special occasion for over a century now?” Aziraphale traced the curve of Crowley’s ear with the tip of his finger, and Crowley squirmed, his blush deepening.

“You trying to say last night wasn’t a special occasion?” Crowley breathed, looking up at him.

Aziraphale couldn’t help but kiss him again. “I suppose it was, wasn’t it?”

“Been a blessed long time coming, that’s for sure.” Crowley sat up and kissed him back, nudging Aziraphale’s mouth open and wrapping gentle hands around Aziraphale’s shoulders. “Wasn’t entirely sure it’d ever happen.”

“I rather thought it would be more of a collaborative effort, when it did,” Aziraphale told him, resting his forehead against Crowley’s. “Less, ah, staring into the void and swilling the good scotch and so forth.”

“It’s not my fault you’re like a celestial brick wall.” Crowley leaned back, his thumbs tracing circles over Aziraphale’s shoulders. “I spend decades goosing the detective genre along because you like it so blessed much, and a _millennium_ later I get accused of ruining the novels for kicks.”

“Oh, Crowley.” He hadn’t meant it like that. But then, Crowley couldn’t mean it like that, either, could he? _How long have you known?_

“How’m I supposed to deal with an obstacle course like that, when it’s just… I mean, it’s just us now, isn’t it?” Crowley let his hands drop and gave Aziraphale a wan smile. “It was hard enough when I could give you the whole world, if you wanted it. Sometimes you did, sometimes you didn’t, and I never knew which it was going to be from one moment to the next. And now, it’s--I’ve got nothing left to offer, angel. It’s just me. Staring into the void and swilling the good scotch is as effective a strategy as any other, when you pull a hand that bad.”

Aziraphale took Crowley’s hands in his and kissed his knuckles, and Crowley watched him with those dark, beautiful eyes.

“I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you in all this time we’ve known each other that…” Aziraphale tightened his grip and pressed Crowley’s hands to his breast, so that Crowley could feel his heart beating. Had he been so afraid of Crowley knowing what a state he was in, before? “--that it’s only really been you that I wanted?”

“So if I were to knock off with bringing you lunch and finding adorable little theaters and avant-garde patisseries that take your standards as a challenge instead of a pronouncement of doom and ferrying you around London so you don’t have to take the bus?” Crowley asked archly.

“I like all that.” He didn’t even know anymore how much of that he’d liked for itself and how much of it had been because it was Crowley doing it. Aziraphale leaned forward and kissed him, pressing their lips together with a warmth he’d been waiting for for such a long, long time. “I _love_ you.”

“Even if I never find that last button off your sweater and put the coffee table back with electrical tape and baling wire?”

“I would still love you,” Aziraphale said firmly. He gave Crowley a stern look. “Don’t, but I would still love you.”

“Even if I win the rematch?” Crowley asked, his smile finally turning confident. Aziraphale blinked at him and tried not to blush at the thought of Crowley purring underneath him and demanding a reward for not cheating more than he had. “Oh, come on, angel. You know you only won because I was plastered.”

“Is that so?” Aziraphale countered, trying not to smile too broadly in return.

“Absolutely.” Crowley’s lips twitched. “You know what? I’m feeling generous this morning. And I did drink all your best special-occasion scotch, even though there’s maybe a bit of an unsettled question about whose scotch it really was in the first place.” He raised his eyebrows and cocked his head. “Best of three?”

Aziraphale flushed and extended his hand. “Deal.”

Crowley looked down at his hand, grinned fiendishly, and then swept him up and pinned him to the bed. “Victory is sw--”

Aziraphale pinched his side, and Crowley yelped and let go. “Victory is fleeting, dear.”

“You’re not allowed to pinch me, angel,” Crowley laughed, grabbing him around the waist and rolling them. Aziraphale was glad he’d made the bed as big as he had, and as soft, and dressing Crowley in his own pajamas hadn’t been overdoing it in the slightest, not with how good the demon felt against him like this. “That’s cheating, is what that is.”

“Oh, it’s cheating, is it?” Aziraphale barely managed not to squirm when Crowley pressed a flurry of kisses to the back of his neck. “What--ah! That tickles!”

“Mmm. Half the point of it, yes,” Crowley agreed, nuzzling his throat. Aziraphale wanted to stop there, to just enjoy the feeling of Crowley’s lips against his skin, the feeling of Crowley’s chest pressed against his back. “You were saying? Something about promising not to fight dirty? Or maybe telling me you’re incapable of cheating because you’re too holy for all that?”

“I was going to say,” Aziraphale told him, pushing more firmly back against Crowley, “what are you going to do about it?”

Crowley’s arms tightened around him, and Aziraphale could feel the hitch in Crowley’s breath.

“Oh, angel,” Crowley said softly, brushing his teeth over Aziraphale’s shoulder. Aziraphale shivered against him, and Crowley’s hands found his, their fingers twining together. “What am I going to do about _you_?”


End file.
